What follows in this paragraph is a short tale regarding the appeal of the latest Disney nature documentary. I was getting set up to watch the movie with my kids but my 7 year old son didn’t want to watch it so he left to go play downstairs. 15 minutes later he came up for some reason and got sucked into the drama. At the end of the film he asked if we could watch it again, “from the beginning this time.”
Bears are interesting creatures with personality, and that’s one of the things that comes through in this feature. I’m not going to go into how a nature documentary can be shaped by a narrative that is created after filming. Creating a sort of script for events then editing events to fit that story is a common practice.
Does DisneyNature: Bears do this? Well, sort of. But there’s a reason this is done. Wild animals are… well, wild. We can observe them and know what they will do, but their schedule isn’t the same as ours. On top of that the weather can affect filming conditions so as to make filming impossible. Sequential filming is almost always impossible with nature documentaries. It is, then, remarkable, that it only took two years to gather the footage for DisneyNature: Bears.
Following a mother bear, Sky, and her two cubs, Scout and Amber, we see what is supposed to be the first year of the cubs’ lives. We see them emerge from the den in the spring and eventually head back to hibernate as winter begins to return. It’s a solid look at what it takes to survive as a bear cub, dealing with hunger, environmental hazards, other bears and more.
I have seen a lot of nature documentaries in my lifetime, and a few about bears. While I didn’t really learn much of anything new here I was highly entertained and my kids did learn what it takes to be a bear in the Alaska wilderness. Filmed on location at Katmai National Park there’s less intrusion from humans than with other documentaries about this animal. In many ways this helps keep the focus clearly on the subject. Looking through the special features you can see just how close (literally) the filmmakers got to their subjects.
The special features are alright, but I would have liked an audio commentary discussing what it took to capture the footage as well as some of the inevitable stories about funny animal encounters or what have you. There is a short featurette about the challenges of filming in a remote (and that’s saying something) section of Alaska. Another featurette looks at the challenges of filming the bears themselves and another on aerial photography. Why wasn’t this all put into one behind the scenes offering? There’s also a featurette about bears, myths, and more. It’s more factual than about the making of the film. Some of this would have been alright folded into the main feature. And a music video.
DisneyNature: Bears is a good introduction to this animal for families. It provides a relatable story about survival framing it in a way that will entertain as well as provide insight.
I’m still not going to go out and hug one.