A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A bear comes around the house of a happy family and the father goes out to deal with it. Unfortunately he is attacked and mauled to death, leaving the bear free to move into the house and take his place within the new family unit with a boy and his mother.This animation must be a very personal film because in terms of meaning and content it is very specific and not particularly helpful to the casual viewer coming at it with no context as I am. The plot sees the bear take over the father role including relations with the mother and there is something in here about the bear representing loss or a new father figure following the loss of the original one. It is a dark tale where death is a common theme and in particular the impact of those deaths on the family as a unit and as individuals, but in terms of what I was supposed to take from it I have to say I am not sure. Buckelew knows and you can see there is heart in his delivery here, but for me I struggled to know the significance and meaning of what I was watching and so it lost me a little.It does still have heart though. The animation is good in the way it embraces the safe cartoony style but yet is about such a dark subject and dark events – it can only have been deliberate to have such a style contrast with such a story. It is worth a look because if it speaks to you I imagine it could be very powerful, but for me it seems the film is a personal experience that Buckelew and I do not share in common and, as a result, I couldn't really get into this film.