The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Bear

From the same studio that produced the Oscar-nominated film The Triplets of Belleville, Danish director Jannik Hastrup's 2003 Chicago International Children's Film Festival award-winning animated The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Bear combines traditional ink drawing with CGI to bring to life a powerful tale based on an Inuit legend. After birthing a stillborn cub, a polar bear goes into mourning, until her mate--desperate to relieve her suffering--steals a human Eskimo baby boy to raise as their own. Reminiscent of Kipling's Mowgli in The Jungle Book, the story follows the hairless ursine "cub's" antics as he learns how to walk, run, catch fish (aided by the comic relief character of Raven), and sense danger. The latter comes to him in the form of his real father, a hunter who has been tracking his missing son for years, and the young man-cub is suddenly faced with an identity crisis, as he is forced to choose between his true origins and the only life he's ever consciously known. Alternately funny, suspenseful, uplifting, and sad, this meaty family film is like a throwback to early Disney films (such as Bambi) that had the courage to engage children's emotions by broaching the topics of death and sorrow. And it might as well be said that this is a French film without puritanical hang-ups about the body, so there is brief animated nudity (we see the mother birthing the boy between raised knees, discretely seen from the side, as well as a nude female spirit that the boy encounters late in the story). Presented in both the original French (subtitled) and a nicely dubbed English version, the film is also available in a "Collector's Edition" DVD for $29.95 that includes a short featurette with the U.S. voice actors, a trivia quiz, and background notes (all of which are not enough to warrant spending the extra $10). A beautiful exploration of what it means to be a "family"--in the broadest, truest sense--this handsomely-animated fable is highly recommended. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)