Save your money for something good and enjoyable

hyped garbage

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

You'd never be able to question Brigsby Bear's foundation of originality.Saturday Night Live alumni Dave McCary's film is a truly unique independent offering with its heart in the right place and some neat ideas but the initially intriguing and quietly captivating experience of Kyle Mooney's James Pope's journey from a life of solitude, with escapism provided by a fake TV show, through to a life lived in the big wide world of making friends and learning how to live and love, ends up becoming a somewhat familiar experience that never makes its mark like you had hoped.As we begin our journey with the mid-20's James, who is living under the care and supervision of his parental figures in the form of Jane Adams and Mark Hamill (doing some nice work in limited screen time), McCary's film is full of odd whimsy and an off-beat, yet heartfelt core but as this story of a man-child learning to become an adult and learning to focus on the important things, McCary's story, that largely ends up involving James and his new outside friends making a movie based on the made up character of Brigsby Bear, loses much of its charms and captivating concepts.There are some fine individual sequences and moments of genuine heart and laughter but McCary's film to often finds itself walking familiar character beats and story arcs as James begins to understand more about his new surrounds and characteristics of human beings and as this occurs you wish you had had more opportunity to see some more of James backstory and life in the surrounds of his previous bunker life, not so much of his time making his passion project with a bunch of side players we don't ever come to care that much for.One thing you can't take away from McCary's film and his overall vision is the commitment by his able-bodied cast of familiar faces that includes the likes of Greg Kinnear, Claire Danes and Lonely Island/ex-Saturday Night Live member Andy Samberg, who all seem invested in making Brigsby Bear more than your average every day off-kilter experience and it's always nice seeing actors of note take time out of their otherwise higher profile projects to work on smaller scale affairs such as this.Final Say - Filled with some great ideas and fantastic individual moments, Brigsby Bear has its fair share of wonder and easy to digest charm but from the highs of its starting point, McCary's film slowly makes its way towards its end zone and ends up being a middle of the road experience, rather than a great one.2 ½ bear costumes out of 5

I just watched a movie that could have been really stupid. Really silly. Really mindless. And done as an offbeat dramedy is typically tossed out to us from Hollyweirdworld, it surely would have been. But the bunch behind "Brigsby Bear" clearly determined early on that this is what most would be expecting. And they cried a collective, "HELL NO!". The result of such scarce solidarity among the measure of movie making magicians has resulted in a funny, freaky and ultimately touching story. "Brigsby Bear" succeeds in bringing to bear the likes of that which is seldom concocted, nor bankrolled, in the biz of busting the beatific box office. Fabulously fresh faire fully worthy of our focus. As I am not a patron of "Saturday Night Live" I was wholly unfamiliar with "Brigsby Bear" star and co-writer Kyle Mooney. This is an interesting looking, and behaving, guy who put me in the mind of a kind of curious cross of affectation and physical resemblance among Dana Carvey, Steven Wright, Joel Coen and REM bassist Mike Mills. Damn, is that quite the broad-based brotherhood if ever there was one. And while on the subject of eclectic, let's talk about this spectacularly cool cast. It is not just any flick that combines the wildly diverse entertainment resumes of Greg Kinnear, Mark Hamill, Jane Adams, Claire Danes and Andy Samberg (who also Co-Produces here).So what is "Brigsby Bear" about you're no doubt asking? On face, it's about a "well meaning" survivalist couple abducting a baby, who decades later is returned to his birth family as a grown manchild, obsessed with a kid's TV show of which he was an audience of one. But what this quirky and affecting saga is really ABOUT is the definition of family, and the many forms and incarnations defined therein. The overarching message is this-that support, encouragement, understanding and love are not necessarily the stuff of rigidity and tradition. Rather, it is a common bond among souls. Souls that matter to others more than anything in the world. And in the strange case of "Brigsby Bear", it makes little difference whether that connection is forged in "real life" or from the limitless life of the human spirit. After all, isn't this the eternal truth to which each and every one of us bear witness?

It's hard to imagine an audience much beyond five or six that wouldn't be bored by this. It's like a much less funny, much more earnest Napolean Dynamite. It is so lacking in edge that it is virtually a marshmallow of inconsequential sequences strung together by emotions which it touts but doesn't really possess or elicit. It's a hipster's fairy tale that mistakes overly calculated naivete for heart and substitutes empty quirk for wit. It goes from A to B and takes forever to get there. If that ride had as much charm as this pretends to have, it might have made it a worthwhile trip. Sadly, it does not.

I'm still teary from the last few minutes of the movie, did not think it would be this emotional. Kyle Mooney is so incredibly subtle with his acting that if you haven't seen much of his previous work, I'm positive most of the parts I was laughing out loud at, you would probably be wondering what was so funny. He is a fantastic character actor and he really pulls off a new subtle character in James, which is kind of an amalgamation of his most well known characters from his Youtube skit days, perhaps a little more naive than normal.There wasn't a weak actor in the entire film, but besides Mooney I would give special praise to Mark Hamill, although he only has a few scenes on camera, his presence is felt throughout the entire movie, through his voicing of Brigsby etc. I actually thought Hamill was better used here than in "The Last Jedi"..I'm not much of a critic, I can't summarise exactly what I loved about the movie very well. I will say though that the movie is superbly bitter sweet, mostly sweet, endearing and charming. And of course, absolutely hilarious, but as above, you may need either repeat viewings or be an already established fan of Mooneys work.Finally want to mention Dave McCary. Dave and Kyle are the perfect pairing. I absolutely loved their Youtube skits and even that amazing Instagram series they made (it's called the "D and K podcast", look it up). For his first feature length film, there is no way you would be able to tell. The movie is very well directed, I tend to pay attention to how a movie is shot, put together etc, but with this it was always characters first, which I think is a great strength. This movie is inspirational. I can't wait to see what these guys come up with next.