Is this what happens when your dad is Darth Vader? You choose abduction over adoption? When it comes to parenting, it would seem Mark Hamill has a bit of the dark side in him, after all. This movie isn’t about Mark Hamill, however, it’s about the baby the Mitchums (Hamill and Jane Adams) abducted so many years ago. Whatever happened to baby James? He grew up to be a giant nerd. It’s not really his fault; all he knew was nerdery.
If you think about it from a skewed perspective, James’ bubble makes sense. I mean, what do you do with a baby you abduct? You can’t show him off or put him in school. Heck, you can’t even take him to a doctor. (So why does James wear glasses?) Eventually, the child grows into adulthood and you have to control that, too. So here’s the scenario: James (Kyle Mooney) is a pod child, living entirely underground in the Arizona desert. He believes that the air outside is poisonous. He exercises by machine and the only visual entertainment he has is a television show called “Brigsby Bear,” an invention from his father who goes to a warehouse once a week to film a new episode. And dad doesn’t exactly have access to CGI, dig?
This is all kinds of messed up, right? In fairness, James has never suffered through a single commercial in his entire life. Brigsby Bear himself is an interstellar warrior who manages to save the galaxy every week with love, logic, and incredibly weak martial arts skills. Also, Brigsby teaches math and science on the side; it’s fun to learn. And James is totally in to Brigsby; like fanboy into it. His parents, incognito of course, double as moderators/users for their three-person internet forum discussions. I almost have admiration for their helicopter parenting; what aren’t they providing? I mean besides freedom and other humans, which James cannot fathom anyway.
It isn’t long before James’ world changes. The FBI finally catches up with the Mitchums and returns James to a family and a life he’s never known. Can you imagine a world in which Team America: World Police represented the height of screen technology? Can you imagine going from the “Teletubbies” to “Game of Thrones” or from the music of Barney to literally anything that exists in pop music right now?
There’s a cruelty involved in exposing James to what he’s missed and the film knows it. I mean, suppose you love vanilla ice cream. You eat it every.single.day. You love it. You don’t even know there’s another flavor or shade of ice cream. You document every single scoop you’ve eaten. You write about it and discuss it and argue its merit. Then one day, the
vanilla disappears and is replaced by every other flavor of the rainbow. You can have anything you want … except vanilla. Is that a trade you make? I daresay most Americans don’t make that deal. Now consider that this is no deal; James has been forced into a world of choices he can’t even fathom, but he cannot have the one thing he knows; it’s evidence. Brigsby Bear is strangely deep for a film where the title character looks like a failed mascot.
I can’t do justice to the goofiness of Brigsby Bear. The film is a study in Nature v. Nurture, but it’s kind of hard to make any argument at all when the alternative universe “Brady Bunch” lead cares about figuring out how to make decent special effects while wearing a bear costume. I can’t claim being thrown off message, but then I haven’t spent the entirety of my life watching “Super Friends” from the fortress of Zonatude. While I certainly thought third-rate production values detracted from, say, A Ghost Story, I think it works here. Part of who James is lies in bad costuming and D- special effects. That’s the nurture part. And his neediness compelling him to keep a stranglehold on those D- special effects is the nature part. And I still get a laugh out of his partiality among the original Brigsby extras. This isn’t a “don’t miss it” film or even a “3 a.m. with friends” film, but it’s probably a must see for film nuts.
In life, James wasn’t treated fairly
Restored yet he’ll never get squarely
Resorting to his shows
That’s all he knows
Can you withstand the cheese? Bear-ly
Rated PG-13, 100 Minutes
Director: Dave McCary
Writer: Kevin Costello, Kyle Mooney
Genre: Philosophical goofiness
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The lactose intolerant
