[Nadir-Fest part 1 of 3! We subjected ourselves to an all-afternoon triple-header viewing session intended to get us through a dreaded low point as quickly as possible. Parts 2 and 3 to follow.]

BROOM Our day of bad movies has begun correctly. The ways in which this was bad…

ADAM Were manifold.

BROOM … and also surprising to me. I found myself thinking about how a project like this comes to fail, because I think this movie failed, and yet I don’t think the initial impetus was doomed. I don’t think that every element of it was incompetent. It just didn’t work, and I found myself thinking managerially, imagining that I was working on it and knowing that it was going bad, and thinking, “What do I do? What is the key thing to do to try to make this better?”

ADAM Let’s start by saying what was good about it. Because I thought it was really lovely to look at it. They just went out of their way to make it lovely.

BETH I think they were pretty proud of that, too.

BROOM I thought the coloring looked blatantly like it had been done on a computer. The flat way that it was colored, but especially the crappy rounding shadows that looked like they had been applied in Photoshop. And I thought the foreground lay against the background in a dead-looking way.

ADAM Well, maybe I don’t have the technical competence to see that, but I thought that compared to, say, the way that Pocahontas thought it was lovely, this was actually much prettier to look at. There were a lot of satisfying touches, like the way they changed colors in the early morning light.

BETH I thought some of that was a little incompetent. But I thought their color palettes were very interesting and vibrant. They clearly cared about which colors they were choosing. And they were diverse, too; they really switched it up based on the locations. But their handling of light was a little strange and wrong. They were trying for accuracy and not hitting it, but being very overt about the attempt.

BROOM Are you talking about that mottled-light tree effect?

BETH Yes!

BROOM That was the first time I thought, “that’s an animation special effect, and it’s not entirely working.”

ADAM What was this?

BETH Early on, they were walking through sort of a sun-dappled forest landscape, and they were, you know, all splotchy, and it didn’t work. But it was interesting that they were trying.

BROOM I’m surprised that you thought the palettes were good. To me they were, like many aspects of the movie, a case of “I can see what you’re trying to do, but it doesn’t quite work.”

ADAM Well, look at those fish [in the animated DVD menu still onscreen], for example.

BETH This particular palette is kind of awful, but…

BROOM Well, it seems characteristic to me. The colors were all sort of tasteless, cheesy. It’s like you’re at a Disneyworld hotel, and everything’s some kind of souped-up salmon color.

BETH It’s like one of those moving “paintings” at a Chinese restaurant. Of a waterfall.

BROOM On a video screen, you mean?

BETH Kind of, but it’s not really on a video screen. It’s like a “moving painting.” Do you know what I’m talking about?

BROOM I think so. I’m not sure I’m picturing exactly what you are, but that kind of restaurant world of taste, and lack of taste, is how I felt about the way this looked. Someone’s idea of beauty was being played out, sort of, but it didn’t feel sharp.

ADAM The color palette was very unlike the color palette in your apartment.

BETH I just liked that they were being daring and diverse.

BROOM I agree for obvious reasons that it’s appropriate to compare this movie to Pocahontas. And I actually thought the palette was the strongest thing Pocahontas had going for it. The bold illustration style of Pocahontas is much more appealing to me than this touchy-feely pastel world.

BETH But as a child, watching the colors in this movie, I would have been riveted, because every shot was different, had different colors, and that’s enough to keep me watching.

ADAM As I child I was offended by when the Smurfs would go walking in the forest and it was just the same four trees rotated over and over. I think I would have been captivated by all the effort that went into this.

BROOM It has a kind of abundance, certainly. But especially with the presence of CGI elements — like that rippling water in the menu — my eye feels like there are actually too many colors there. There’s a certain sense of artistic care that comes of things being really chosen, whereas here it felt like there was just a lot of stuff.

BETH I agree with you as a grown-up. But as a kid, I think I would be taken with it.

ADAM Before we get into the things that didn’t work, was there anything else that worked?

BROOM Much as during The Fox and the Hound, which this resembled, I felt like the setup itself was promising. There were moments when I was sincerely thinking about the storyline and the substance. People from two different worlds; how are they going to relate? Being forced to empathize with your supposed enemies.

ADAM All that very grave multiculturalism at the beginning really felt like the first term of the Bush administration. I kept picturing Karen Hughes wearing a scarf and President Bush lecturing Muslim countries on the dignity of women. It sort of upset me, honestly.

BROOM Which was more politically offensive, this or Pocahontas?

ADAM It’s interesting — maybe I’m just constructing this after the fact, but Pocahontas felt to me like a more naive, dippy, Maya Angelou-type multiculturalism, whereas this was just so studied and self-important that it kind of grossed me out.

BROOM I feel like we’re in pretty much the same dimension here as there.

ADAM Yeah, we’re talking about two “Great Spirit” movies. Maybe I’m teasing out distinctions that aren’t there.

BETH Maybe it feels like they should have known better by now.

ADAM It felt like they had a lot of Native American consultants working on this movie. There was probably a lot of very studied attention to dignified detail about Native Americans’ lives. Even though the characters were all named after cities in Alaska.

BROOM Pocahontas was more explicitly sanctimonious about multiculturalism. This was a movie about universal empathy. I felt like the construction of this movie had more to do with basic human issues than the construction of Pocahontas.

ADAM That was about the clash of two different cultures, yes.

BROOM This one is basically the same concept as in The Sword in the Stone, where Merlin turns him into animals so he can learn about life as an animal. So of their two “Indian” movies, this one felt less offensive to me as far as its Indianness.

ADAM Pocahontas just seemed a little daffier. It was less self-important, and thus easier to take.

BROOM Yes, its ridiculous musical sequences were at least a spectacle, unlike these.

ADAM “Did you ever hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?” I mean…!

BROOM The thing is, that’s kind of a catchy song, by comparison… Pocahontas is one of the very worst movies in the entire sequence thus far, I would say, and this project resembled it somewhat, but it failed in different ways.

ADAM The main thing that bothered me in the first third of this was the three bro-y bros. But I guess you have to make them relatable somehow, and that’s the chintziest way to do it.

BROOM Well, I think that’s the dimension in which the movie failed most significantly: it’s supposed to be all about character, and they didn’t give us real character. Not even in the designs.

BETH They hardly distinguished them. I didn’t even know who the main character was until the other one died.

BROOM A time-honored technique for directing the audience’s attention! Yeah, the dead one was the most charismatic of the three. And then the hero’s journey of discovery is supposed to be about him being a teenager who thinks he has all the answers but doesn’t, and has a lot to learn… but his progression just played as “Go away kid, I’m sullen and annoyed. Oh wait, there’s fun in the world!” That was it, and that’s why this was super-boring.

ADAM Did you like Tanana?

BROOM The grandmother? No.

ADAM She was only onscreen for about thirty seconds, which was weird. I thought she was going to come back in some way. I guess she comes back at the very very end.

BROOM Her design was gross. Her eyes were too big and her face was funny. I didn’t like her.

BETH I didn’t dislike her.

ADAM Did you like the little bro’ bear? I must say I found him sort of appealing and cute.

BETH I found him annoying.

ADAM It was too much, but there were aspects of him that got me. I teared up a little at the end.

BROOM Is that true? You don’t need to be ashamed about it.

ADAM I was embarrassed, but…

BETH No, it’s good!

BROOM Which part of the end?

ADAM When he decided to stay a bear!

BROOM You teared up because of the emotion of that? I was truly shocked by it.

BETH I was too.

BROOM It seemed like the wrong ending.

ADAM Can we talk about that?

BROOM and BETH Yes!

ADAM It is really weird, first of all. But maybe it’s just our human prejudice that makes us assume it’s better to be a human than a bear.

BETH But this guy has lived all of his life, except for a couple weeks, as a human.

ADAM He did look better as a bear.

BROOM Everyone looked better as a bear. The humans were all unappealing.

ADAM And he did have to atone in some way for killing Koda’s mother. It wouldn’t have been right to just leave Koda to his own devices after having killed his mother.

BROOM Did you get the impression that becoming a bear was presented as a noble sacrifice?

BETH No. He preferred being a bear.

ADAM It was like what’s-his-name staying on the Avatar planet at the end. Or like the Swiss family Robinson staying on the island.

BROOM But when I watch Close Encounters and he gets on that ship at the end, he’s done with planet Earth, I think, “whoa! I don’t know if that’s gonna work out for you!” And here, there was that, plus above and beyond that… The whole movie is presented as a coming-of-age story; like in The Sword in the Stone, this is all his education. You become an animal to learn something about God’s creation. But with this ending it seemed like they didn’t understand that, so the moral becomes “it’s good to be an animal.” It stops being about learning anything.

BETH Were we supposed to think that he decided to be a bear because he discovered that he loved his little brother bear?

BROOM “He needs me,” is what he said.

ADAM It would have been better if bear-to-human was a portal that they could slide through at will.

BETH It sounds like if you just go up to the top of that mountain you can switch.

BROOM It’s possible that some of these questions are answered in Brother Bear 2.

ADAM I was pleased that there were no overt fart jokes in this movie.

BROOM You’re right. The humor was terrible, but it was not infantile.

BETH But it was really bad.

ADAM The poster is a picture of Kenai and Koda in close-up, and the caption is “Nature Calls,” so I was worried. But it turned out to be more dignified than that.

BROOM Their indulgence of Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis was way out of proportion. I mean, I’ve never thought those guys are funny.

BETH Those guys aren’t funny, and kids, especially, have no reason to think those guys are funny.

ADAM Canadian kids might.

BROOM You did laugh when he said “I love dew.”

BETH I did.

BROOM It was kind of funny. Anyway, I expected this movie to be bad because I expected it to be sanctimonious and grating, and it turned out to be bad because it was just boring. And thin. I felt like pretty much every element wasn’t really at the level of execution they should have held it to.

ADAM It was a writing failure most of all. I mentioned Bongo earlier. What was the plot of Bongo?

BROOM Uh, he’s a circus bear…

ADAM And then he has to go into the woods and be with wild bears, is that right?

BROOM Bears “say it with a slap!” That’s what I remember.

ADAM And it was super-boring.

BROOM Bears are boring!

ADAM Well, I don’t think we’re going to have to encounter them again.

BROOM Talk about Phil Collins a little bit.

BETH Among the worst songs. They’ve been bad for a while, but these were worse.

ADAM They were also surprisingly intrusive. They were just suddenly some Phil Collins extravaganza coming at you, at the worst times. That song about how everything sucks!

BETH There was no subtlety to the lyrics at all.

BROOM My favorite part of watching this was that during Adam’s favorite song he immediately started trying to learn the lyrics so that he could sing along with the choruses.

BETH “This is our festival… and best of all…”

ADAM When I saw that part, I thought, “I don’t want to be in a family with these other weird bears.” All of whom seemed self-absorbed or strange in a way that didn’t really make me want to hang out with them.

BROOM There’s something very odd about this discipline Disney has become dependent on, of having a series of original songs in a non-musical, where the songs have generic lyrics about the generic emotion of the moment — “The songs will not have lyrics alluding to bears, salmon, or fishing, because that would be embarrassing” —

ADAM It wouldn’t be marketable on a CD.

BROOM I think of it as going back to Toy Story, with “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” but especially the song he sings when Buzz Lightyear is depressed, about “I won’t go sailing again,” which has to be kind of coy about how it relates to what’s actually going on. Because there are to be no songs explicitly about toys. This movie had four songs in that category. I think they do it because they think it’s less absurd than singing about bears, but it actually becomes more absurd. Here comes Tina Turner singing something — is she singing about this bear movie? Because that would be weird. But is she not singing about this bear movie? Because that’s even weirder! That’s how I felt, especially during that first song — the montage is “Welcome to our beautiful Inuit world,” but the song really didn’t directly support that at all.

ADAM Well, “My Heart Will Go On” isn’t really about the Titanic. And it is not coincidental that “My Heart Will Go On” was an extremely successful radio single.

BROOM There was one song in that movie and you only heard it over the credits. That’s standard.

ADAM You heard it throughout, you just only heard the lyrics over the credits. And, like, what was the song for Pearl Harbor?

BROOM Yeah, but that’s how things have been forever. Since the 60s at least.

ADAM “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing.” [ed.: Armageddon]

BROOM We’re watching a scene where a man who killed a bear and then got turned into a bear is telling the son of the bear he killed that he used to be a man and that he killed his mother. That’s a very weird scene, and it’s the pivotal scene in this movie. And Phil Collins is singing a song as though it’s something you might have heard already on the radio… but it’s about that! When you listen to what he’s saying, he’s definitely singing about this bizarre scenario, but in code! There’s something very strange about that. And those lyrics were really grim. The lyrics of “Theme from Brother Bear” are, like, “There’s no way out of this dark place…”

ADAM Did this movie make you want to be a bear more than before? I would say “yes, a little.”

BETH No.

ADAM But only in prehistoric Alaska. It seemed fun when they were fishing.

BROOM Yes, obviously, being part of their festival seemed like it would have been a good time.

BETH There was a waterslide.

ADAM You’re right, all the landscapes did sort of look like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

BETH Yeah. But I like that!

ADAM And they have the garish coloration of the line for Splash Mountain.

BROOM Yeah. It felt like a resort. And, I guess, who doesn’t like a resort?

ADAM The color of those rocks in the menu is, like, Dusty Sedona.

BETH It looks almost like an early video game.

ADAM Like “Monkey Island.”

BROOM Yeah, like one of those adventure games. An “I can’t reach that from here” game.

BETH Where they only had thirty-two colors to work with, so they were all very extreme.

BROOM Well, this would be a two-hundred-fifty-six color game.

BETH Sorry!

ADAM VGA.

BROOM That’s right.

ADAM I didn’t detect anything gay in this movie.

BROOM There was no romance of any kind. There were no women.

ADAM There was a little bit of feminine panic at the beginning, when he was like “Love? What a stupid totem!” “Hey, loverboy!”

BROOM I actually thought that was promising! I thought the best thing in the script was that he gets told his totem is love and he’s like, “Ugh, I don’t want that.” I was ready to get on board. I thought, “yeah, it’s going to be about him learning that love is not something mushy to be embarrassed about, it’s a spiritual and important thing.” That seemed like a good theme for a movie. But no.

[the review is read]

ADAM You wanted to talk about the widescreen? [ed. The first 24 minutes are standard ratio; the image becomes widescreen after the character is transformed into a bear]

BROOM Strange gimmick! When there was that message before the movie warning us that it was going to happen, I thought, “This is critic bait, so that there’d be something to write about in the papers. They did this so they could PR it out there that they had done this.” And yet Stephen Holden didn’t even mention it. I feel like I’ve heard of maybe one other movie that changes the aspect ratio in the middle.

BETH I think I’ve seen a movie that does it but I can’t remember what.

BROOM I thought it was going to happen as we watched, that the image would spread and get wider and wider. But no; it went black for five seconds, and then came back at the full ratio with a not-particularly-impressive first shot.

BETH It was a callback to The Wizard of Oz, kind of.

BROOM But I thought it would be like that, where a door opens and something is wonderful on the other side.

BETH Well, his eyes open and he’s sort of blurrily looking around.

ADAM Meh. It was an underwhelming effect for being trumpeted the way it was.

BETH I wanted to mention that there were “handheld” shots during the killing of the bear, which we haven’t seen before.

BROOM Yes, another technical idea that didn’t work.

[as counterpoint we read the heartfelt five-star reader review from the New York Times review page]

ADAM The person who wrote that comment has a “BELIEVE” bumper sticker on the back of their car, with a mandala and a star of David…

BROOM “Recommended by zero Readers.” Well, the point that there is no villain in the movie is well taken. And yet the movie fails, because they didn’t do a good job.

ADAM I kept thinking about William Faulkner’s “The Bear” while I watched this. And I thought, maybe Faulkner could have learned a thing or two. Imagine how that story would have been improved if there had been a bear’s-eye-view chapter. I think I’m done now.

BROOM Yeah, because we have miles to go before we sleep.