Every Disney Animated Movie Since 2000 - Ranked

19. Brother Bear

With its themes of death and rebirth, the transformation of souls from man to beast and its sense of the scope of the wilderness, Brother Bear feels very much like a reworking of the ideas behind The Lion King, relocated from the plains of Africa to the wilderness of Alaska.

Unfortunately, Brother Bear also feels very much like a lesser rehash of Disney's core ideas, mimicking classics like The Lion King but failing to match them in quality. Joakim Phoenix is perfectly fine as Kenai, the young man who is turned into a bear after killing the bear who killed his brother. But the performances can't undercut the mundane writing which permeates Brother Bear from start to finish.

Brother Bear is one of those films which never seems to rise above a mediocre waterline, taking itself too seriously to be much fun to watch and with too few standout sequences to break up the overall feeling of monotony.