La Chasse à l'ours

I am amazed by the nature, simplicity, sweetness, and all this reminds me of childhood, vacations, enjoyment in nature. Also the ability to be friend with bear looks like one of typical fairy tales or dreams. But the title and movie are looking so naive and dangerous. Makes no logic or sense that anybody, especially kids will go on bear hunt, and get scared and not even trying to hunt it then. Looks like bad example of sarcasm. Not as magical as better cartoon like Le Bonhomme de neige et le Petit Chien (2012).

The music in this film is lovely, the animation is beautiful, the theme is deep and real. For anyone who has ever dealt with loss, this film resonates in a beautiful way. My three year old asks to watch this with me over and over, and loves it.

A great adaptation that added deep layers to a simple story.

Michael Rosen's 1989 tale, We're Going on a Bear Hunt has delighted toddlers for years. A tale I read to my own children when they were young.

Four children go for a ramble singing a song about hunting a bear, they are going to catch a big one. Of course Rosen has expressed the words in a way to develop their language skills as they decide if they can go over it, under it or just go through it.

The story was wonderfully illustrated by Helen Oxenbury and now it has been turned into a 30 minutes animated cartoon by Channel 4.

However what should be a 10 minutes cartoon has now been reimagined for the longer running time. It left my son rather confused as he saw bits that he never recalled being in the book.

The cartoon ends up being rather melancholy as it turns to the concept of loss and grief, the children's grandpa having recently died. It also turns to loneliness as the bear is alone and without a friend as he wanders back into his cave. Maybe small kids could end up being less than enchanted over Christmas due to a misjudged ending.

The animation was very good, a lot of detail here and there and of course there is plenty of snow being made by the same company that made The Snowman and the Snowdog.

We're Going On A Bear Hunt (2016)-

I don't remember the book from my own childhood and that might be because it's a really boring story or because I never owned it. Either way there is no sense of nostalgia here for me and so this review is purely based on my thoughts of the film today.

It is a lot weaker than the others of the same type. For me 'The Snowman' (1982) will always reign supreme as the best short cartoon film, but that one does hold a lot of memories for me. However, even held up against the more recent films like 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea' (2019) or The Snail And The Whale' (2019), Bear Hunt just doesn't work for me. It is missing a key ingredient that I can't quite put my finger on.

It seems to try to include various facts about bears in an educational way, but would a bear really live in a cave on a beach? Or is that bit not one of the real facts and is the Bear in actual fact a metaphor for the recently deceased Grandad? Or is the cave just where the youngest child has lost his own Teddy bear? It's not altogether clear and I'm not sure what we are supposed to take away from it unless we are just supposed to enjoy it for the bright colours that might appeal to a very young audience, even then they aren't that bright (The colours, not the audience, necessarily?).

It was also odd that it was snowing at one point and they were wearing shorts. It didn't seem to know what season it was or where it was set and again it was unclear whether this was all just part of the imagined adventure or not.

Artistically, it was pretty and it wasn't overly cast with huge celebrity names, which made no difference as I've always said, but I do have to wonder if it is literature like this that might be giving us generations of youth with no real idea what a good story is. People that might buy 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' and actually enjoy reading it when they're older?

I wouldn't watch it again in any hurry and probably only when I've forgotten that I've seen it before.

346.76/1000.