On November 7, the outdoorsy Brother Bear will mark the comeback of a studio 'toon tradition as old as Mickey Mouse himself: talking animals as star attractions. "We develop prejudices," says vice chairman Roy E. Disney. " 'We can't do another one of those for a while.' But it takes four years for these films to be developed." The hibernation period is over, according to USA Today. Brother Bear, a fable set in the Pacific Northwest after the last Ice Age, follows a reckless teen named Kenai ("KEE-nigh," voiced by Joaquin Phoenix) who is turned into a bear by the Great Spirits.Brother Bear's plot promises the same sort of "you'll laugh, you'll cry" emotional charge as The Lion King. As Kenai struggles with issues of valor and honor, he is cheered by a rambunctious cub and a pair of comical Canadian moose, Tuke and Rutt. Disney's new head of feature animation, David Stainton, sounds relieved when he says of the film's chatty wildlife, "It's what the audience really loves." In his first official interview since assuming the post two months ago after overseeing TV animation, Stainton also said that Brother Bear's rich hand-drawn vistas will prove that old-style 2-D cartooning hasn't gone the way of the film's woolly mammoths. "The look of the characters is more realistic than Lilo & Stitch. We're back to an oil-painting feel rather than watercolor." To inspire animators, chairman and CEO Michael Eisner brought in his own painting by Albert Bierstadt, an American West landscape artist of the1800s. Disney says the film has a kinship with Lilo in that both were created at the Orlando animation facility, "out of the immediate eyesight of a lot of people. They had a chance to develop their own personalities." They also share similar price tags--more than a third less than Treasure Planet.
From Animated News
From Animated News
