Brother Bear | October 4, 2025

Original Release Date: November 1, 2003

Watch Date: September 27, 2025

Rating:

Favourite Aspect: Native Representation

  Brother Bear is a movie I remember quite fondly as a child and, having re-watched it this week, I can say it absolutely holds up. The visuals, comedy, and story are near perfect and comes from an era of Disney that seemed to start a shift into better cultural representation and on-screen diversity. Although this movie is not perfect, such as the casting having a lack of actual native-Alaskans. I believe it is a big step up from their previous movies with depictions of Native Americans, such as Pocahontas and especially from Peter Pan. And although Brother Bear and other Disney movies may not be the best showcase of a culture's way of life, it is still important to realize the wide reach Disney has and how that can help people learn about about these different groups of people.   What I think speaks most for this movie is the art - with beautiful nature scenes and amazing depictions of the Northern Lights; I think this movie would have been a treat to see in theaters, especially with the dynamic shift in aspect ratio after Kenai's transformation. With this movie is traditionally animated, you get a warm feeling of viewing a nature painting during the landscape shots of mountain ranges and running rivers. And of course, who could not mention the awesome soundtrack by Phil Collins - one of the best soundtracks from a Disney movie!
  I do know I had seen the sequel to Brother Bear a few times as a kid, but do not remember much of it so I may try giving that a watch-through and a review. Although many great Disney movies came out around this time, I also feel that Disney started digging into making sequels for some movies that felt more like cash-grabs than anything, especially when it was to make a sequel for a movie that was over fifty years old. I've also picked up a copy of the Brother Bear game on PC and hope to play-through that (at least for a few hours) so I can drop a review on that as well!