Little bear necessity

Allegedly Walt Disney's swansong for two-dimensional animation, this is a dull-witted, more-holistic-than-thou cartoon about three prehistoric Native American brothers and their relationship with the animal/spirit world.

Emerging from Disney's Florida branch, I can only assume the makers have either OD'd on sunshine or are too isolated from the rest of the known world. While the animation itself (from the same team as Mulan) is charming and at times beautiful, the script is banal and uninspired.

The theme of transmogrification is hammered home as young Kenai (voiced by Joaquin Phoenix) kills the bear who was responsible for the death of his older brother, only to be transformed into a bear himself. Cue the peace-loving, surviving brother's change of philosophical lanes to go after the bear, unaware that the creature is really his younger brother.

Irony climbs on irony as Kenai/Bear discovers a new respect for animal kind, which assists him in getting to grips with the ways of the wild, in particular a motor-mouthed young cub who has become separated from his mother.

The comic moose are fairly dire and the general lack of humour makes this a very forgettable experience. Little kids will be bored after 20 minutes and only drippy hippies will be entranced by the rainbow effects of the northern lights/spirit world, which is not at all assisted by Phil Collins's toe-curlingly "sincere" songs.

In what must be a vintage year for animation (Belleville Rendez-Vous, Spirited Away) this is a severe disappointment from the studio that was once regarded as the sine qua non of feature cartoons.

Brother Bear
Cert: U