Brother Bear 2 (Animated) (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Great sequel, there's 4 moose !
Disadvantages:	Doesn't live up to the first, but then it was never going to .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Having just reviewed Brother Bear (you might like to read my review here - http://dvd.ciao.co.uk/Brother_Bear_Animated__Review_5819952), one of my all-time top 5 films, and with the house to myself I thought I might as well continue with the theme and watch its sequel Brother Bear 2.

Brother Bear 2 wasn’t shown at the cinema (most Disney sequels aren’t), it went straight to DVD in 2006.

The DVD

As ever the DVD begins with a number of trailers for Disney and Disney Pixar films….this includes Cinderella 3….skip!

To the title menu where the options are Play, Scene Selection, Bonus Features and Set Up.

Bonus Features (only read this bit if you’ve got nothing better to do):

Game – Trample off, Eh? - The moose are renowned for saying “Eh?” in Brother Bear (a Canadian thing apparently). To play the game you’re asked questions, and receive moose chips for correct answers – they need to trade in chips for the Northern Lights show to attract their dates (the Moosettes). It’s a pin game where a cone goes down to choose the topic – for instance Nature’s Call “which of these seasons comes after spring” – summer, winter or fall? Yea, I won my first moose chip. Unfortunately it’s all a bit slow, and after that I pressed what I thought was enter, but it ended the game, so back to the beginning (just for the purpose of this review). There’s no way of skipping the introduction bit and it’s very slow and hard to navigate. Some of the questions are actually quite cute, only if you like the moose though! Pants, I got one wrong as I wasn’t concentrating – thankfully it doesn’t matter and I have another try! When you have 7 moose chips there’s a little sketch with the moose watching the Northern Lights. Quite frankly, don’t bother!

Bonus Video – Music Behind Brother Bear 2 – Melissa Etheridge (apparently she’s a huge star and has won Grammys, but I’ve never heard of her) talks
about her inspiration for the music which she wrote – it was the pictures apparently. Ok, it’s no Phil Collins like in Brother Bear (yes yes, no Phil Collins comments please!). But the music is nice enough, and it fits in with the whole Disney thing. Anyway, this film goes on for 8 minutes.

The Film

Back to the wonderful scenary of Brother Bear. Kenai and Koda are playing happily together in the snow (they are bears you see), and the moose Rutt and Tuke (still with Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas doing the voices) are there too.

The first major thing to point out in this film for those who have seen the first film is that Kenai no longer has the voice of Joaquin Phoenix, instead it is done by Patrick Dempsey. However, the other voices are the same….I think it would have been a bigger change if Koda (the young Jeremy Suarez) had changed since his voice is so distinctive. The only characters from the first film are Kenai, Koda, Rutt, Tuke and Tug (a big bear).

Anyway, Kenai and Koda are off to Crowberry Ridge to find the first berries of the season as they’re really hungry having been in hibernation all winter.

However, when dreaming, Kenai goes back to his past when as a child (back when he was human) he played with a little girl called Nita – they were best friends, and Kenai had given Nita an amulet which meant that they were destined to be together forever.

Back to the real world, and Nita (voice Mandy Moore) is preparing to get married. However, a sudden earthquake disrupts the wedding – could this be due to the divine intervention of the spirits? Nita consults the village’s shaman woman (she’s a little mad). Basically, Nita is unable to get married due to the amulet which Kenai gave her years ago. In order to break the amulet’s power, Kenai and Nita must meet at the place where she was given the amulet (Hokani Falls) and burn it on the Equinox. Of course Nita is a woman, and Kenai is a bear, so thinks are not going to be simple - luckily Nita is given the ability to converse with animals – all very useful!

Of course it’s not so simple just to get to the falls and destroy the amulet, for one Nita seems to be scared of water due to a past experience, and then there’s the evil racoons…..

The main point of the story seems to be how Koda feels when Kenai starts spending all this time with Nita (as one might guess they start to fall in lurve). There’s some sort of a lesson in there somewhere! The main themes are issues of friendship, love and loyalty.

The subplot of the film is that there are 2 female moose Anda and Kata who Rutt and Tuke are pursuing. The other characters are very involved with this. There’s some comedy moments, but somehow now quite as good as in the original film. However, from a personal moose-obsessed point of view, having four moose in a film is absolutely FANTASTIC, and that alone makes this film an essential watch.

More about the film

The animation in this film is lovely, although perhaps not up to the standard of the first. It’s bright and colourful, but somehow lacking slightly…perhaps because the budget wasn’t there, and perhaps because it was going straight to DVD rather than being shown on the big screen.

The voiceovers are fantastic, and I found I started to forget that the voice for Kenai was different from before.

I’ve already mentioned the soundtrack when talking about the Bonus Materials – songs by a woman called Melissa Etheridge. They’re nothing special, but not bad either.

Is this film as good as Brother Bear – NO IT IS NOT! However, that doesn’t mean to say that it isn’t worth a watch. If you enjoyed the original I think there’s a pretty good chance you’ll enjoy this too, although not quite so much. It will certainly appeal to children and moose lovers across the world. For a sequel it is pretty damn good! Well done Disney……can I please have a Brother Bear 3 with 6 moose in it?

Other

The film lasts just 74 minutes which is pretty short so should hold all but the shortest attention spans!

More about Brother Bear 2 can be found here:

http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/brotherbear2/

You can see some nice clips including the moose and moosettes here - http://disneydvd.disney.go.com/brother-bear-2.html

I’m not sure how much I paid for this – I got it when it first came out (obviously to get my moose fix!), but it can currently be bought new on Amazon for

£9.58 or Play.com for £6.99. I would personally recommend looking for a reasonably priced box set of the original and this film – I have seen them at

bargain prices occasionally.

Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to know, and enjoy looking at my screen shots – of course the majority of them involve the moose!