Plot: Kenai and Koda are back, and Kenai has reunited with his old friend Nita who wants a favor. She’s trying to get married, but apparently she’s already been promised to Kenai after giving her an amulet when they were children. The great spirits support monogamy so they force Kenai and Nita to go to the place where the amulet was given to burn the amulet and break the bond between the two. However, even the simplest tasks can be complicated when love enters the picture.
Breakdown: I loved the movie Brother Bear. It’s not as dear to my heart as some other Disney movies, but I still loved it. It had wonderful visuals, a good story, mostly good characters and great music. One of the best things about Brother Bear is that it’s one of the few Disney movies to almost completely omit the subject of romance.
The main characters never fall in love, they have no romantic interests, and there’s no big get together or wedding at the end. The most romance that they had in that movie was some sappy couple of bears at the salmon run that were meant to be comedy focuses, and a passing flirtation with Denahi and a couple of girls. That’s it. There was no room in Brother Bear for romance because the story was set purely on the brothers; Kenai, Denahi and Sitka, and Kenai and Koda. The reason I loved that was because I am really just so sick of stories feeling like they need to shoehorn in romance into any and all storylines even if there’s no room or no point.
In this sequel, they rectify that by having the entire movie, subplots and all, be about love and marriage. Oh and brotherhood is squeezed in there somewhere. Every character that reappears in this movie gets a love interest beyond Koda, and love is shoved so far down your throat that it’s painful.
Well, let’s ruin another Disney movie for me. Welcome to Brother Bear 2.
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We start with Kenai and Koda chasing each other as the opening music plays. The music’s somewhat reminiscent of the original movie’s, but noticeably different. The opening song, ‘Welcome to this Day,’ pales in comparison to ‘Great Spirits.’ Right from the start you can tell we’re in for a romance themed movie with swans making a heart shape with their necks to happy little goat parents watching their children.
Why hasn’t Koda grown….at all? In the least? It’s an entirely new year, yet he’s not even slightly bigger.
While one has not changed at all, the other has changed quite a bit as Kenai has had a voice change in this movie. I understand when they can’t get back original voice actors for sequels, especially direct-to-DVD ones, but Patrick Dempsey sounds nothing like Joaquin Phoenix.
They’re on their way to some ridge for the spring equinox to get all sorts of different berries to eat.
We have a short run-in with Tug, the big bear from the last movie voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan, who is really only there to plant the idea of romance into Kenai’s head by talking about his girlfriend. Kenai says they don’t need anyone else, but is clearly speaking with a bittersweet taste in his mouth.
We cut to a dream sequence that Kenai is having about a childhood experience. He and Nita were playing around in the snow using spears as pole vaults until Nita stuck the spear in too close to the edge of a floating piece of ice and fell into the water.
She’s saved by Kenai, who brought her up to the top of the nearby waterfall to warm up….What an awful place to warm up. The water rushing in front of the cave has to make it even more freezing in there than it is outside. As Nita tried to keep warm, Kenai gave her an amulet that he had been wearing and they drew stick figure drawings of each other on the cave wall. Nita’s father appeared on a boat below and she left never to see Kenai again I guess.
….Well, there’s your big story behind this character and the amulet. Real impressive, huh? Also, simply giving a girl, especially when you’re children, a wooden amulet is an instant promise of eternal bond? Meanwhile, we cut to another Inuit village where Nita is getting ready for her wedding.
The first scene with Nita is very reminiscent of the scene in Mulan that starts the ‘Bring Honor to us All’ song. She has two women who are never given names or explanations as to who they are to her clamoring over her every detail for the wedding. She tricks them into leaving as she puts on her wedding dress, which is the last thing that she has left of her mom. Oh yeah here’s something Disney doesn’t do very often, Nita’s mother is DEAD! Whawhawhaaaaa?
Her father comes in to talk to her before he gives her away saying how her mother would be proud and whatnot and they walk down the aisle.
It’s here where we see our first and practically only glimpse of Nita’s fiancée, Atka. He stands at the altar and gets no lines. There’s your characterization, people.
However, the great spirits will have none of that and send their mighty wrath upon the wedding by shooting down a lightning bolt which cracks the ground between the bride and groom. The villagers see this as a sign from the great spirits, and we cut to Nita meeting with a shaman about what to do about it.
She’s played by Wanda Sykes, because God forbid we just have serious characters. She invokes the powers of the great spirits who tell her that Nita has already been promised to another in the form of an amulet. In order to break the bond between the two, the couple must go to where the promise originated and burn the amulet. Nita tells the shaman that Kenai’s a bear now. How she knows that is unknown. Maybe village to village gossip? So even if she found him she wouldn’t be able to talk to him.
Also, remember how the spirits were the ones who changed Kenai into a bear? Remember how none of the characters had magical powers? Well, now we have a shaman who has the power to talk to the spirits whenever she wants and give people the ability to talk to animals. Hell, even the village elder from the first movie couldn’t understand what Kenai was saying when he got turned into a bear or do magic stuff. But screw that, we need to speed this movie up so ✸✮ MAGIC✮ ✸!!
She sets off on a journey to find Kenai an– are you kidding me? Not even a minute after she learns that she has to find Kenai….a bear….in the vast wilderness…..she finds, you guessed it, Kenai! In a scene that is reminiscent of when Nala finds Simba from TLK…She’s seen as a hunter by the boys and Kenai tries to protect Koda by attacking her, but finds that it’s Nita and puts her down.
Nita and Kenai reunite for a bit before she explains that she needs his help to burn the amulet that he gave her so that she can get married.
Kenai obviously feels a bit hurt that Nita wants to burn the amulet that he gave her when they were kids and refuses to go with her. She says that neither of them can go on with their lives if they don’t do this, but he still refuses.
….Wait, why can’t he go on with his life? He’s been doing just fine so far. It’s not like bears get married. But she, for some reason, brings up that the great spirits might turn Kenai back into a human again for some reason to help her burn the amulet.
…..What? How?…What? He’s not a bear under punishment anymore. He became a bear of his own volition. Even if they did offer that, why would he care? Unless…..wait, are they using his relationship to Koda as leverage? Are they technically keeping Koda hostage away from Kenai unless he agrees to help? Wow, that’s kinda awful, spirits and Nita.
Koda, hearing this, worries that they won’t be brothers anymore if they do turn him back. So, in order to sate Koda’s worries, he agrees to go to the waterfall to burn the amulet. Flimsy plotpoints are on buffet right now.
The boys and Nita run into the moose, Rutt and Tuke, the comic relief from the previous movie, as they’re also on a mission of love. They’ve been trying to find mates, but the girl moose that they’ve found won’t give them the time of day. Kenai agrees to help them by pretending to attack while Rutt and Tuke pretend to save the girls and win their hearts.
It ends up in an awkward to watch scene where both Kenai and Rutt and Tuke fail miserably at their roles. Kenai does an embarrassing job trying to attack, which is odd because he’s shown that he can seem threatening, and Rutt and Tuke actually end up getting so scared by Kenai’s lame acting that they fall into the river and float away. I get that the scene was meant to be lame, but that was painful.
Kenai ends up getting kicked into a hollow log by the girl moose before they leave as well. In an attempt to get Kenai unstuck from the log, we realize that Nita has a fear of water ever since she nearly drowned as a child. She loses her bag containing the amulet in the river and is too scared to simply lean over and grab it from the water. She has a fit as the bag starts to float away and breaks the log that Kenai was stuck in as she yells at him to retrieve it for her. It goes over a waterfall, but quickly ends up on shore, somehow. As she breathes a sigh of relief, a comic relief raccoon comes over, sifts through her bag and steals the amulet. Why? Because padding.
I’m just now realizing that Kenai doesn’t have his totem around his neck. It was given back to him at the end of the first movie. What happened to it?
Anyway, Kenai, feeling guilty for apparently being responsible for her losing the necklace, goes off in the middle of the night to find the raccoon. He spends all night tracking it down, and then Nita barges in and climbs the tree when Kenai was waiting for the raccoon to fall asleep to take it without bothering them. That’s the way to repay someone for doing a favor to you and working their ass off all night; by doing your best to ruin their hard work and not thanking them at all.
She makes too much noise and alerts the raccoon. He doesn’t notice Nita, but sees the boys. They ask for the necklace back as Nita tries to retrieve it herself. He then calls on his raccoon brethren of about 100 friggin’ raccoons as backup. What exactly happened to everything being afraid of this BEAR? The raccoons pelt him with pinecones until Kenai offers a trade. He has nothing to trade, but Nita has the amulet so who cares?
However, there’s a baby raccoon clinging to the necklace. She shoos him off, but then he cries for his mommy, which alerts the raccoons to Nita’s presence and they start chasing her. I should mention that this scene is very reminiscent of the scene in Tarzan where Jane makes a baby monkey cry because she shoos it off of something she wants and then is chased by hundreds of monkeys. What is going on in this movie? There are so many scenes seemingly taken from other Disney movies, yet the movie itself is boring as hell.
Kenai tells her to climb to the top of the tree while all of the raccoons follow her. He advises her to let go because he’ll catch her, and they send the raccoons flying while sending themselves flying into a snowbank. Then they speak a mile a minute about what just happened while ending on how amazing the other is in a scene that is very reminiscent of a scene in a fellow Disney sequel, Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp’s Adventure. Really, what is going on?
We’re at the halfway point in the movie and I’m still failing to get into it. Nita’s really annoying. She’s pushy, whiny, selfish and just an overall chore to watch. Koda’s annoyed me since the first movie and he’s no better here. Kenai’s okay, but his different voice and constant slapstick gags get old fast. The subplot with Rutt and Tuke is just embarrassing to watch. I didn’t mind them much in the first movie, but they’re pretty awful here. They’re there to push the message of love and extend the runtime. That’s about it.
As for the plot, it’s very thin. It’s obvious as hell that Nita’s not going to end up marrying Atka especially since he’s not even a character so much as a picture with a name. He has no personality and no dialogue thus far. She’s gonna fall for Kenai, and, if that shaman was any indication, she’ll likely get turned into a girl bear and they’ll live happily ever after.
Anyhoo, we meet back up with Rutt and Tuke who are still trying to court the girl moose. They’re rubbing themselves with dead leaves, mud and, thanks to a prank from Tuke, poop, in order to attract them with scent.
Poop jokes? Really? That’s what we’re reduced to? Thanks, Disney.
Kenai tells them that he has another idea, but Nita explains that his last plan sucked. Kenai then decides to brush off the whole situation and go to the falls, but Nita decides that she wants to stay which is completely against the way that she has been acting this entire time. She’s been hell-bent on burning that amulet at the falls since she arrived, not willing to put up with any nonsense that interrupts them. Now she wants to delay her trip?
Nita sends Koda out to the girls to act all cute and cuddly even though bears, ya know, eat moose. They’re all in love with the little guy, and Koda says that he’s playing hide and seek with his two best friends. Rutt and Tuke then come out asking if they’ve seen their bear friend. Koda comes out and they act all cute with him, tickling him and laughing and whatnot.
The girls are all impressed with how good they are with the kid. They finally look like they’re going to get a date, but Rutt, for reasons beyond my understanding, suddenly blurts out poetry which makes him look like an idiot. Tuke knocks him down and walks way with both girls stating that his brother was hit on the head as a child and Rutt runs to follow. Bros before hoes doesn’t apply to moose apparently.
Nita and Kenai basically flirt about how she was able to hook them up but he wasn’t and they ignore Koda’s pleas for attention at impressing them with how good he acted during the plan.
Kenai explains that the falls are close as they only have to go a short ways and cross the river to get there by lunchtime the next day. Obviously the whole water-phobia thing comes into play so Nita suggests instead of going through the river that they climb a bunch of mountains and crap to avoid it.
Kenai and Koda practically laugh at the stupid route she suggested, and they vote to go their way, but she refuses like a stubborn child. Koda flips a fish out of the river for lunch which lands in Nita’s hands and makes her fall into the river. She flips out and immediately makes her way to shore.
Koda believes that she’s afraid of fish so Kenai and Koda quickly start laughing at her for it. Koda even takes the fish that he caught and does a puppet show about how scared she is of fish.
Wow, how completely insensitive and assholeish of you guys. First of all, she’s freaked out at the concept of water three times by now. That’s not a big enough hint that she’s afraid of water?
Second, even if she was afraid of fish, that’s no reason to act like an ass.
Third, this water-phobia thing is getting old, and it doesn’t even make complete sense. I can understand if she didn’t display outright signs of trauma after she was rescued as a child, but she left that scene ON A BOAT! If she’s so traumatized by water to the point where she won’t even lean over and grab a really important bag out of a slow as hell moving river, how did she easily get into a boat and paddle away? She’s so scared of water I really have to wonder how she handles bathing or gentle rainshowers.
Kenai realizes that they’re upsetting her, so he yells at Koda to stop it. He doesn’t explain why, especially since he was laughing with him a minute ago, he just sighs in disappointment and goes to comfort Nita. He apologizes, and she explains her phobia of water and how she can’t go through the river because of it. Kenai says that they got through this much together so they’ll get through that together as well.
Thus begins the ‘Koda Neglect montage’. Basically we have a montage of Nita and Kenai flirting and having fun together as they travel, while Koda is either treated like crap or completely ignored the entire way. Kenai stops Koda from walking on a log bridge to let Nita go first, he and Nita completely block Koda’s view of a mama bird feeding her baby birds, they nearly KILL HIM by not noticing or caring when he nearly falls off of a mammoth that they’re riding, barely able to hold onto the tail, and every other scene with Koda shows him being completely ignored.
The song accompanying this montage is also okay, but it’s not very memorable.
The montage ends upon reaching the riverside. Kenai gives Nita a ride on his back to cross the river, and, after going under the water and seeing turtles, she’s completely over her fear of water to the point where she actually gets off Kenai and swims to shore on her own.
What utter and complete bull. Yes, facing your fears helps you get over them, but a quick dip in the river and seeing some turtles shouldn’t be enough to completely cure you of a crippling phobia that you’ve had since you were a child that was caused by a traumatic near-death experience. It’s also a completely anticlimactic and stupid end to that insipid plotpoint.
Kenai and Nita walk away on the other side of the river, and Koda watches them with sadness as he continues to get ignored. They’ve been ignoring him in his entirety all day. I’d be surprised if they even realize he’s still traveling with them. What a good big brother Kenai turned out to be.
As Koda broods, we get another appearance by Rutt who has also been ditched by his brother for those floozies from before. He tells Koda to watch out because his brother might do the same thing to him. Rutt and Tuke; good for stupid comic relief and giving awful messages to children.
Koda doesn’t believe that Kenai would ever ditch him, but obviously has doubts.
Koda crosses the river and eavesdrops on Kenai and Nita who are laughing and talking by a fire not even realizing that Koda could’ve drowned behind them eons ago and no one would’ve been the wiser. I have a feeling these two are somehow the ancestors of the parents from Rugrats.
Nita asks Kenai if he’s ever considered going back to being a human. He says that he’s thought about it, and before you can say ‘obvious misunderstanding’, Koda interrupts and says that Kenai is going to leave him for Nita and become a human again and he runs away. Kenai and Nita sit on their asses long enough for him to get a good head start.
So yeah now they’re ripping off their own movie. Koda ran away in the last movie too, also in the snowy mountains.
Kenai and Nita search for him by following his tracks in the snow. Even though Kenai showed amazing tracking skills with those raccoons, he completely misses the footprint that leads into an ice cave, but Nita finds it. She also fails to tell Kenai because the plot said that Nita and Koda needed to have a heart to heart.
Nita finds Koda hiding in a hole in the wall of the ice cave and tries to bring Koda back, claiming it’s not safe, but he refuses. As the cave starts to collapse, he jumps into Nita’s arms. Well, that’s kinda what she meant by unsafe….
They manage to escape, but Koda gets pinned under a bunch of ice. Nita saves him, but flings them over the cliff in the process. They dangle over the edge while an avalanche occurs due to the collapse. They somehow ride the broken cliff piece on top of the avalanche (rocks do that?) but inevitably get buried. Kenai spots them and surprisingly only yells out Koda’s name. As he digs them out, again, all he says is Koda’s name. Ya know, you can show concern for both of them. There’s no need to play favorites just because Koda overreacted prematurely and you’re a terrible brother.
Koda explains that he believes Kenai’s going to leave him to go off with Nita and become human. He said he does miss being human, but they’re brothers and he’d never leave him. If Koda had just let Kenai finish his sentence before, this whole thing could’ve been avoided….
Hearing this, Nita gets all whiny. How did we go from constant slapstick and stupidity to butthurt city and stupidity?
We cut back to Rutt and Tuke where they’re watching the northern lights. Rutt’s off on his own while the girls are cuddling with Tuke who asks Rutt to get them some twigs, and Rutt chokes back tears and agrees to go. Hearing that he’s crying, the girls instantly gravitate to his sensitivity and cuddle with him. These girls are more easily swayed than girls who thrive on teen romance novels.
They reach the falls and see the lights as they prepare to view the spring equinox.
Oh did I forget to mention that in this universe the spring equinox is a magical event made by the great spirits? It happens in an instant. Yup, the great spirits turn winter into spring in mere moments, melting feet of snow, growing grass, blooming flowers and more. Because gradually doing that stuff over the course of a few weeks wouldn’t have meshed well with the movie.
Koda brings up connecting with his dead mom through the lights as Nita mentions her dead mom as well. We get some cliché line about how you don’t need to see the spirits to know that the people that you have lost are within your heart forever. The speech couldn’t be more cliché if it were on a Hallmark card.
Despite this talk about spirits and dead relatives and this being called BROTHER Bear, I guess dead brothers need not apply to this conversation because Kenai never brings up his dead brother from the previous movie, Sitka.
The guy dies for you, turns you into a bear to teach you a life lesson, and is a friggin’ eagle, which is awesome, yet you can’t even give him a verbal cameo? Nice. I will give some slack here as to why Kenai’s other brother, Denahi, makes no appearance as his voice actor committed suicide before this movie was created. However, he can still be mentioned.
They start the burning and the lights vanish. After the amulet is gone, Nita tries to talk to the boys, but finds that the spell broke with the burnt amulet. This creates a mirror of the same scene from the last movie where Kenai becomes human and is hurt when he can’t understand Koda’s words. She tearfully says goodbye while Kenai and Koda simply roar and grunt at her.
We get our first sad song as they go their separate ways. It’s actually a very good song. Much more memorable than the songs we’ve been given. It has a nice somber tone and melody that fits the mood well. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as ‘No way out’ but I still like it.
Koda and Kenai reach some food while Nita reunites with her family and prepares for her wedding.
Koda talks with Kenai about Nita. He asks if her gave her the amulet because he loved her and he says it was a long time ago so it doesn’t matter. Kenai goes off to sleep to get to the ridge with all the berries that they were going to early in the morning.
Koda speaks to the spirits, moreso his mom, telling her that he’ll be fine on his own and that they should turn Kenai back into a human so that he can be happy. The spirit lights….flicker for some reason and we cut to Kenai waking up. They kinda trick you into thinking that the spirits did turn him back, but he’s still a bear. Rutt and Tuke inform him that Koda ran off to find Nita and bring her back to him to make him happy. Kenai freaks out because Koda will be killed by hunters the instant that he sets foot in the village.
We cut to Nita getting ready for her wedding again. She’s having doubts this time and tells her father than she can’t marry Atka. Aw, but we got to know him so well and fell in love with him during that 32 seconds of screentime with no dialogue or backstory. And we know she truly loves him because she never talks about any aspects of him whatsoever and really never brought him up at all. Such a shame.
They’re interrupted by screams as Koda runs around being chased by the villagers. Nita tries to stop them to no avail. We finally get dialogue from Atka a full hour into this hour and 13 minute long (including credits) movie. However, we don’t learn much about him besides he’s like every man in the village in that if a bear entered it, they’d want to kill it. Kenai bursts onto the scene roaring to get them away from Koda. They run away with Kenai getting grazed on the back by a spear, but don’t worry, the wound’s gone mere seconds later. Continuity!
Kenai sticks Koda in a tree and tells him to stay low while he drives them away. Despite doing his best to hide, other hunters catch Koda anyway while laughing like stereotypical villains.
Rutt and Tuke surprisingly show up to save the day, but end up getting caught up in a tree as they try to jump on the hunters. Conveniently, the tree breaks and falls on the hunters, leaving Koda unharmed and the girls once again impressed.
Kenai tries to run away from Atka, but he can’t shake him. Kenai jumps onto a cliff, and Atka throws his torch on it to spook him while jumping on him with his spear. The two fight while Nita catches up to them. She tries to get them to stop, but only Kenai does. Atka throws the torch in Kenai’s face and pushes him over the edge of the cliff. I guess this scene could resemble the scene in The Lion King where Scar did the same thing, but not exactly.
Nita scolds Atka for what he’s done and goes to Kenai’s aid. Yes, Atka. You’re awful for doing what you were taught to do your entire life and has never been seen as wrong until this very moment since the bear was your fiancée’s friend. Oh and protecting the village from what appeared to everyone else as a violent rampaging bear. You bastard!
Nita and Koda go to Kenai’s side. He’s supposedly hurt but I don’t see how. Koda and Kenai are still speaking to each other in roars and grunts since Nita can’t understand them. It’s odd. This scene is the only emotional scene to me only because of the subtlety involved with not being able to understand them.
Kenai puts out his paw and Nita matches it with her hand, again, like Tarzan, and Kenai puts it to his heart to say ‘I love you.’ Eugh. Nita admits her love for him too, and the great spirits make a cameo again. Apparently they’re loading the ‘Make Kenai human’ program as Koda tells them what he asked them to do and that it’s okay because he just wants Kenai to be happy again. Kenai tells Nita that he can’t become human and leave Koda, but Nita tells him that she can join him instead – BOOM! CALLED IT! NITA → BEAR RESOLUTION!
Nita’s father comes and asks her if this is what she truly wants. She says yes, and he gives her his blessing. What a cool dad. Interracial marriage still isn’t cool to some people, but he’s letting his daughter turn into a bear to marry a bear. We can all learn a lesson here, people. It involves bestiality in some way I think, but it’s still an important lesson to learn.
Also, since when do people order the spirits around? Last I checked, they do what they want when they want unless they feel like giving you a choice. What, is Koda’s mom pulling strings up there?
I’m sorry to say that, while the intro almost sounds like a remix, we don’t get a reprise of ‘Transformation’ from the last movie, which sucks because that’s one of my favorite instrumental songs in the Disney franchise. Instead we get some mish mash dramatic music that sounds cobbled together…..
Nita looks….kinda weird as a bear, and we cut to their bear wedding with bear friends and the village merging together. Right, the villagers who were laughing maniacally at catching a bear cub are now cheering at a bear wedding. Okay, movie. Atka’s nowhere to be found here, by the way. I guess he got burned at the stake for trying to kill a bear which is now seen as a friend. Damn that bastard who only got about two minutes of total screen time and about two full lines!
This is a legit issue with me, though, because we’re left thinking that Atka’s an asshole when he’s supposedly a really nice and honorable guy. They could’ve resolved this a lot better. Have Atka be understanding like a good friend. If Nita really did love him enough to go through all this to marry him, he can’t be all that bad.
Surprisingly, Eagle-Sitka does make a brief appearance at the very end though.
The raccoons from before are also there to cheer them on for reasons beyond my understanding. Why would you cheer on characters that stole what you believed was your stuff and flung you across the forest by a tree?
We end on the great spirits changing the cave wall drawing of Kenai and Nita as humans together to bears. Because little details like that need to be changed by great and powerful spirits.
The end.
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Wow was that a big disappointment. To it’s credit, they could’ve done a lot worse, but what they did do still wasn’t really good. The movie’s a bore. It’s predictable as hell, the tone is so much more different than the original, Kenai and Nita’s backstory as well as the story of Atka and Nita aren’t fleshed out enough or, in the latter’s case, at all.
Why did Kenai love her back then? Because they played for a minute and he rescued her as she almost drowned? Why were they best friends? What did that amulet mean to Kenai? He’s the one who was wearing it before he gave it to Nita. It must’ve meant something to him. What was the story with Atka? Was it an arranged marriage thing like Pocahontas and Kokoum? What’s his backstory? How’d she meet him? Does he have any form of personality beyond hunting and standing at the altar? Why’d she never see Kenai again after that incident at the falls? How’d her mom die?
This is one of those movies that had nothing to really build on. The story decisively concluded. You could’ve done something with it, but why’d they have to go the cliché angle of making a sequel for the sake of giving everyone a love interest? Except Koda, I guess, but now he has an older sister/mom figure.
Brother Bear is really a movie that shouldn’t have been built on, however. Other than possibly showing us a grown-up Koda having some adventure or learning an important life lesson, there’s just not much to be done here. The story has a solid beginning, middle and most of all, end. No one was yearning for Kenai to get married after that.
Nita is annoying during the first half, but gets gradually more tolerable as time goes on. I never reach a point where I actually like her, but she was reaching good annoyance levels in the first half, so at least she avoided the dangers of my wrath.
On a technical aspect, the art and animation is very good for a Disquel, even if they seem to be going overboard with the color saturation, but not quite as good as the previous movie. It’s Direct-to-DVD-ish while not being TV-series-ish like Hunchback 2 or Aladdin 2 or 3. Also, we don’t have nearly as many epic views or sights to look at, if any, during this movie unlike the first one where practically everything was gorgeous.
The music was also better than most Disney sequels, but nothing particularly memorable to me outside of that one sad song. Phil Collins doesn’t return to do anymore work on this movie, which is disappointing.
The acting is good, but I can’t mesh Patrick Dempsey with Kenai. He just doesn’t sound right.
Bottom Line: As a movie, it’s just okay. As a Disquel, personally, I’d skip it, especially if you were a fan of the previous movie. It’s a predictable, confusing and lifeless movie meant to shoehorn in some love stories into the Brother Bear universe. The writing’s not very good and there are many scenes that seem almost ripped directly from other Disney movies. It has some moments that are legitimately good, and it didn’t make me seriously angry, but it’s absolutely nothing that you’d need to watch unless you like watching Mary Sue Disney fanfiction come to life. It could’ve been much worse, but I still can’t recommend it.
Recommended Audience: I think we actually get a fairly subtle sex joke. At the beginning of the movie, Rutt and Tuke are being chased by a buffalo or something while looking for a mate, and Rutt says that she looked like a moose from behind….yeah. Other than that, it’s your basically sterile Disney sequel. 5+
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