BRIGSBY BEAR – Review

BRIGSBY BEAR is a cute one-joke comedy without the cuteness. It’s weird, odd, and everything the trailers might lead you to expect, but seems to have no loftier goal than being quirky. BRIGSBY BEAR opens with the children’s TV series Brigsby Bear, which features a Paddington-esque bear named Brigsby who battles intergalactic villains including the Sun Scorcher, while spouting childish platitudes.  It’s a crude, cheap production with a devoted cult following of one: shaggy-haired 25-year old man-child James Pope (Kyle Mooney) introduced watching the show completely enraptured. We soon discover that James’ obsession with Brigsby Bear isn’t the only reason he stays in his room. His parents April and Ted (Jane Adams and Mark Hamill) have kept him living in an underground bunker since they kidnapped him as a baby and Brigsby Bear has been the secret work of his captors, a show produced by them for his eyes only. He’s had no outside connections for many years and is told that surfacing requires a gas mask. Soon the authorities, led by Detective Vogel (Greg Kinnear ) arrive, rescue James, and return him to his birth parents Greg and Louise (Matt Walsh and Michaela Watkins) and sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins). When Aubrey takes him to a party, after telling him to “just be normal and don’t embarrass me”, he makes new friends who are excited to hang with the “Kidnap Kid”. As James is reintegrated into the real world and his real family, he must accept that there are no further Brigsby Bear episodes. He decides to make a movie featuring the show’s characters as a way to give it resolution.

A pretentious, witless disaster that wastes a decent cast, BRIGSBY BEAR is one of the worst films of the year, a 5-minute joke stretched out to 97 of the dullest, most soul-sucking minutes I’ve experienced in quite a while. BRIGSBY BEAR is a movie trying desperately to be profound about the way entertainment and reality interact, but it preciously stretches this theme beyond the breaking point. It lacks any real heart or emotion and Mooney, its charisma-challenged lead, fails to connect on any level. For about the first ten minutes, it’s a cute little movie until it comes out of that bomb shelter, and then it turns distressingly stale right before our eyes, with a terrible script that squanders what might have been an original comedy.

Much of the problem is with Kyle Mooney, who wrote the script but should have let someone with more charisma (any charisma) play the lead.  Gaunt and with scruffy facial hair, James is supposed to be 25 but he looks like a creepy 40-year old. BRIGSBY BEAR is likely aimed at the following Mooney has acquired from his Saturday Night Live appearances. I’m told they’re quite amusing but I’ve never seen them and can judge him solely by his work in this film where I found him, with his sappy grin, weak chin and deadpan stoned delivery, utterly charmless. Mark Hamill’s performance is also embarrassing, though fortunately it’s a small role. There is one bright spot in BRIGSBY BEAR and that’s the always-reliable Greg Kinnear. His detective Vogel was once an aspiring actor who sees the Brigsby reboot as a chance to relive his dream, which he does with gusto. Kinnear is so good, and his character has such a happy and charming arc, he seems dropped in from a better movie.  BRIGSBY BEAR shines when he’s on screen but it’s not enough to overcome the thudding weight of the premise, which serves as the springboard for so many lame gags. Sometimes a one-joke comedy like BRIGSBY BEAR will surpass all odds and actually work. To achieve that feat requires deft comic writing, superb pacing, and tremendous performances all around. BRIGSBY BEAR scores zero for three. Leave this one in the underground bunker.

1 of 5 Stars

BRIGSBY BEAR opens in St. Louis August 11th exclusively at Landmark’s The Tivoli Theater