Bambi 2: El Gran Príncipe del Bosque

Bambi II is an in-between-quel set amidst the events of the first film, we see young Bambi alone without his Mother, his Father The Great Prince of the Forest watches over him until a suitable mother is found.

In a time when Disney sequels have been spewed out left and right most of which are annoying and just plain bad. It'd be easy to assume Bambi II would fit into that mess, however it does not.

Alexander Gould voicing Bambi is perfect, he sounds exactly like the original actor. Patrick Stewart voices the Great Prince, I wasn't sure if that was a good choice or not but it turned out to be great! Stewart's voice acting is dramatic yet humorous when needed.

Bambi II balances humor and drama much like its classic predecessor. Really the only part of the story I didn't like was the bully who one-upped Bambi all the time. He was pointless and clichéd.

The kids will love it and you should too!

Whenever I think about seeing movies that are sequels, I get some fear of what I'm going to find. This film, rendered directly to video, was never intended for the big theaters and has the disadvantage of following up on a film that was released decades earlier. In spite of all that, I confess that I liked what I found here, and I even find it difficult to understand why this film was never released in the big theaters.

The strongest and most favorable point of this film is the script, which is much more elaborate and interesting than the original film. In this film, set in the times immediately following the death of Bambi's mother, the young deer will try to adapt to living with a father he admires, but he doesn't know well and seems to maintain an aristocratic distance from everything and everyone. For this, he will try to respond to his father's wishes and prove to be more courageous and mature. It's a funny story, light, well-balanced and doesn't feel too sugary.

On a technical level, I think it is really necessary to highlight the good performance of the voice actors, in particular Alexander Gould and Patrick Stewart. The quality of the drawings, the elegance of a careful and well-defined line, the vibrant colors and the good light are the characteristics that most caught my eye in terms of visuals and cinematography. The soundtrack is quite good and does an excellent job.

I'm sure everyone can remember the first time they saw Bambi, I'm also sure that most of you have cried while watching Bambi, it's one of Disney's most touching films. So I got to see Bambi 2, while normally we have a million Disney sequels that are major disappointments, but Bambi 2 surprised me, it was very well done and was nicely put together. I really enjoyed the animation, the voices, the story, they were really lovely. The one flaw that comes into sequels is how different the voices are from the previous film, despite that you can still notice a difference, Bambi 2 fits the voices very well for the characters. I also enjoyed this new chapter into Bambi's life as he is learning how to become a prince, but still holding onto his childhood and his favorite friends.

Bambi is having a hard time, his father has to take care of him but his father also has no respect for him since Bambi isn't as brave as he is. Bambi will do anything to just get his father's respect, with the help of some old friends like Thumper and Flower, he'll try his best to over come his fear and be a brave prince. But he's got a new enemy, a mean fawn, Ronno, who constantly teases him about his flaws. Bambi is also having to learn how to grieve the death of his mother and make sure that he doesn't meet the same fate as she did.

Bambi 2 is a definite recommendation, it's a different Disney sequel than I've ever seen because it seems like this one could have been in the theaters. It's very well done and just a total pleasure to watch, wither it's by yourself or with the family. I loved the return of Thumper, it's always a pleasure to see him on screen, I loved when he was trying to show Bambi's father that Bambi could be brave, but Bambi needed more time, so Thumper does his best to distract Bambi's dad, it was so cute and funny. This was a good movie to watch, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

7/10

Well, kiddies......... those horrific visions I had of Bambi, Thumper and Flower line-dancing in their ghetto-rap outfits with some knuckle-headed "Poptart" caterwauling in the background were all for naught. I'm not gonna give away all the goodies-would'nt be fair to all my fellow "Mousies" to spew out any spoilers- but I can tell you this......aside from a few issues that sorta chapped my inner child, this is simply the best DTV that "The House of Mouse" has ever released. The animation is every bit as good as a lot of the recent theatrical films , with beautifully rendered background art and an overall "Technicolor" look that was for the most part quite dazzling .........and how about them voices? I gotta admit the casting is excellent.

Story-wise, well....that's one of the things that I still ain't all that thrilled about . Despite having been "kiddiefied" from a book that was essentially written for adults, the original "Bambi" was still a wonderful film that catered to both ends of the age spectrum, a talent that Uncle Walt had in spades. This midquel is squarely aimed at the lunchbox-tetherball set to the point that unless you're a complete animation nut like yours truly, you might find one or two scenes a bit too cloyingly ooky to your liking. Still, it's heads and tail above any of the previous DTV "Twosies" and even a few of the "Feature" flicks released over the past 15 years, and I honestly think it's gonna do quite well.

One other bone of contention I have however, are the songs.Granted, they used a few snippets from the original's score, but all the stuff produced exclusively for the current film was your typically weak, formula-laden "contemporary" numbers that are so cookie-cutter bland that you can't even distinguish one from the other. That was one of the most wonderful things about the first movie ...even more than sixty years after it's release, the songs were so well written that they sound just as good now as they did then. Sad to say, it's gonna "date" the film in a most unflattering way. Second b.o.c. I have is in regards to some of the character animation ie: Ronno, the porcupine and the groundhog, especially Ronno. Pretty average design that clashes terribly with the rest of the animation and the exactly the sort of quality you come to expect from a DTV.As said, the rendering of "Bullyboy"Ronno was the worst...at times his looked like they'd been lifted straight from "Balto III".....not impressive in the least. On the other side of the coin, The Great Prince looked gorgeous as did the other deer.......Friend Owl was drawn absolutely spot on, though Thumper and Flower did look nice they still did'nt look quite enough like their original incarnations to retain all their charms. As for Bambi himself, well.......let's just say that 90% was beautifully done, but unfortunately the animators' attempts to "modernize" his facial expressions in a lot of his scenes failed quite miserably and were very disappointing. Despite it's flaws, it's still better than all the previous Disneytoon releases and well worth at least one watch.

This is another case of the sequel not being quite as good as the original. But don't take that as meaning that this film is bad because it was actually a pleasant surprise. For a sequel, from Disney, this actually hit the spot quite nicely.

This sequel returns all the original characters from the first one and they all play off each other nicely. I am partial to these movies because I live in Wisconsin where deer hunting is part of our culture but this one is still a cute movie(I really wish we'd get a look at the hunters in these movies though!). It has everything that successful Disney movies have with the smooth animation, decent storytelling and the occasional tug at your heart strings. I can think of many worse ways to spend 70 minutes of your time. I, as an adult, enjoyed this film but if you have kids this is a great one for them too. If animation doesn't bother you, give this one a shot!