Film Review #69: Brother Bear 2

Imagine, if you will, a film that actually improves vastly on the weaknesses of the original.  As most of you know, I found the first Brother Bear to be a fairly weak film that offered little outside of cheap laughs for the kids and yet another chapter of "what could have been great..." which was being written by Disney Animation in the early 2000's.  So, with good reason, I had little to no expectations for the sequel.  That actually helped this film out to an extraoridnary degree, as the film would probably have been pretty poor had I liked the original.  By no means whatsoever is Brother Bear 2 a great film by Disney's standards.  But it is still a good children's film that may even get a bit of a laugh from the adults who had to shell out the money for it.

Plot: Kenai's best friend as a child, Nita, has grown up into a young woman ready to marry her fiance.  But due to an Eskimo ritual that bonds people together, Nita cannot marry her fiance until she and Kenai both burn a totem pole that bonded them as children.  As most would expect, the two do begin to fall in love once more as they journey out.  Also, his jealousy in full bloom, Koda worries that if Kenai were to choose Nita over him, he would become human once more to be with her.  But the bear cub shows a surprising amount of adult mind by asking his mother to make his brother human once more to let him be happy.

What's Bad?: Naturally, as I barely tolerated the moose boys in the first film, their presence in this film is a bit annoying.  But beyond them, the film is fairly well balanced.

What's Good?: The relationships between the three main characters, Kenai, Nita, and Koda, are fairly well fleshed out.  You can actually see the chemistry between Kenai and Nita, while you can also feel pity for Koda, who has already lost his mother, and may also lose his best friend/ adopted brother.  The brotherly love between both Kenai and Koda is also pretty strong, both showing absolute devotion to the other and is eager to make the other one happy.

Overall: Brother Bear 2 is a surprisingly effective film.  It manages to improve upon some of the issues I had with the other film, and despite some of the flaws returning, they don't detract from the main story and manage to give kids a reason to laugh in the movie.

Final Grade:  B-