L'Ours

I love "the Snowman" and "Father Christmas", they are timeless Christmas classics. "The Bear" is a simple, haunting and sublime seasonal film, not quite as good as the other two but an essential nonetheless. The story is simple, and so are the characters particularly the warm and loving bear but very effective. The animation is beautiful, very similar to the animation from "The Snowman" and "Father Christmas" and to the illustrations from the book. The music has a haunting and dreamlike quality, with the end song sung beautifully by a young Charlotte Church.

Overall, I highly recommend "The Bear". 10/10 Bethany Cox

THE BEAR, an enchanting 30-minute animation about a young girl's relationship with a polar bear that escapes from the local zoo, is very much a spiritual follow-up to that timeless Raymond Briggs classic, THE SNOWMAN. The two productions look and feel very similar to each other and, while THE SNOWMAN has the edge, THE BEAR comes close to reaching the same level of quality.

As usual, there's far more going on than meets the eye, something that makes these Briggs stories suitable for adult viewers as well as the kids. On the face of it, it's simply a humorous tale about an unlikely relationship, but underneath it's all about friendship, being comfortable in your own skin, the tribulations of finding one's place in society, mysticism and nature versus technology and progress.

Needless to say it's also touching, thought-provoking and magical, with expert, hand-drawn animation and beautifully realised characters.

This film doesn't quite have the structure that the films of the Snowman/Father Christmas/Snowdog trilogy do. It's more of an interpretive dance than a story and that probably makes it quite artistic and beautiful for some. Children may enjoy it for it's simplicity and pretty style and without thinking too hard about it, but as an adult I find that it poses a lot of questions.

Firstly, it's unclear how the Bear got to her house? I'm sure the zoo would have noticed it's absence and I'd like to have seen him sniff out her location to give a tad more information to start.

Also, the music could have been a little bit less like The Snowman in the same way that the 'Superman', 'Star Wars' and 'Indiana Jones' themes are all a bit similar. It kind of took me out of the story as I tried to remember which bit I was recognising from the other festive favourite and which scene it came from.

As I say though, if you're just watching it to show your child a special little picture of fun and adventure and can get past the music issue (Maybe you haven't seen The Snowman at least 300 times), then it's a nice piece, but I tend to want a little bit more, even for a children's film, as they are an important way to teach them new things. I'm not sure this shares much of anything.

319.63/1000.

The Bear and the other animated Raymond Briggs (based on his books), The Snowman, are examples of how drawings and music, without dialog, can give a sublime narrative experience. This film is romantic and fantastic, about imaginative power. Anyone with young kids knows it is rare to find a movie equally enjoyable for adults 6-year-olds and 2-year-olds, but these films are as close to universal as it gets. The music is wonderful -- it reminds me of George Enescu's Octet.The drawings are simple in style, but the animation is actually sophisticated and quite beautiful - although I've only seen it on VHS with its low quality. I"m sure that on film these films look even better.

I love this film and i thought it had so much charm and was delightful to watch. I almost felt obliged to like before i saw it not only because it was my godmother who worked with the producers and animation team to create the film, but also because i had photo's taken of me to model Tilly, but when i saw it i was delighted and was over the moon to have contributed to it. The music is lovely and the atmosphere is simply gorgeous. congratulations to the producers and to Charlotte Church who sang at the end. Well done all! I hope to see many more films of the sort and i am sure they will live up to the same standard at films like The Snowman and of course the Bear.