Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own.
Own We Bare Bears: The Movie on Digital and DVD September 8.
And now that that’s over with, let’s get on with this review of We Bare Bears: The Movie, specifically the DVD version. Hit it.
WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Background Info
We Bare Bears: The Movie is, as its name suggests, a feature length animated movie set in the We Bare Bears series.
We Bare Bears is a Cartoon Network animated show created by Daniel Chong about a grizzly bear, a panda bear, and an ice bear living in San Francisco and learning how to fit in with the humans. With varying degrees of success, mind you, but it doesn’t stop them from trying. It’s currently up to 4 seasons and 140 episodes, so there’s quite a bit of content if you plane on watching this. While We Bare Bears can be described as a children’s show, I like to think of it as an all-ages show.
In many respects, We Bare Bears is very similar to an anime called Shirokuma Cafe (lit. Polar Bear Café). Both shows feature anthropomorphic animals living alongside humans, and trying to live human lives in a human city. Really, the only difference is that one takes place in the US, and the other takes place in Japan. In fact, I suspect Shirokuma Cafe is one of the inspirations for We Bare Bears.
We Bare Bears: The Movie is the first feature length movie of the cartoon series. In fact, it actually serves as the last episode of the series, finishing it neatly on a high note. It’s only 64 minutes long, which is fairly short for a movie, but if you think of it as just an extra-long episode of We Bare Bears, it’s more bearable. I’ll just stop right there.
Story
The plot of We Bare Bears: The Movie feels like something right out of one of the episodes of the cartoon series. The bears make a big mess while going about their normal lives, but this time, people are fed up with their antics. It’s not just this incident either. Hilariously, they even make references to various We Bare Bears episodes when an officer shows up to read off a very long list of complaints the bears have been piling up over the course of their time spent in the city.
Then along comes Agent Trout, who acts basically as a Knight of Cerebus to We Bare Bears as a whole. His idea? Capture the bears, and return them to their “true” homes in the wilderness of their native environments. Naturally, the bear brothers disagree with this plan. Their plan to fix this? Escape to Canada: “Home of the brave, land of the free”.
And so begins a very long and strange journey as the bear brothers try to find sanctuary in the Land of the Maple Leaf. And Poutines. Never forget the Poutines.
The concept is simple, but you get a very entertaining story in between. The plot is also quite a bit darker than the usual We Bare Bears fare, particularly whenever Agent Trout comes in. All in all though, We Bare Bears: The Movie strikes the perfect balance between light-hearted comedy and dark drama, giving the story a 10 out of 10 for me.
Animation
The animation quality in We Bare Bears: The Movie looks just like the quality of the art in the cartoon series. There are some moments when the quality goes up, but overall, it feels very much like the We Bare Bears we all know and love.
We Bare Bears features a simplistic but detailed in places art style that perfectly complements its light-hearted and comedic tone. Plus, it’s just friggin’ adorable. For the animation alone, I’d give the movie a 10 out of 10.
Head over to page 2 for the rest of my We Bare Bears review.
