Next time use a script

Rating: 2/10 (27 January 2013)

In this review, I'm criticizing the storytelling craft of the film and am assuming a complete knowledge of the story. So this review definitely has spoilers. Don't let a crusty reviewer spoil your fun.
OK--we need to tell the Pixar people they should have a script before they start their projects. This movie had every sign of having been made up as it went along.
The story sets the viewer up for a tale of a young warrior--and does a very nice job of it. The early scenes in which we meet the heroine were the best part of the movie.
Yes, I liked her, too.
But the plot wobbles, then veers off eccentrically, mutating into some sort of comedy about being turned into a bear.
This might work if the character being transformed were one we could identify with. But it is the mother--in effect the villain of the story--who becomes the bear, and we are invited to enjoy comedic shtick--beautifully realized by the artists involved, one must say--of a person turned into a bear.
To speak bluntly: they should not have gone with bears at all, much less someone being transformed into a bear. As I say, we were set up for the tale of a young warrior, and we got this weird shtick.
There should have been a character to balance the girl--another warrior or something like that. I say this because the movie itself seems to set us up for that.
The climax involves the father--who, like all the other characters in the movie, has only one attribute--and he becomes a supremely idiotic and menacing figure at the end, which strikes me as more bad storytelling.
Why does Hollywood always think it can get along without writers? Sometimes it works; sometimes we get these strange concoctions.
The result is a very odd tale indeed--a sort of shaggy bear story--whose import seems to be that you can get out of responsibilities by pulling a dirty trick on your mother. With that message, should you let your kids see this? (Just kidding.)