#ro994 talks

I mean yes, it was definitely way sillier than "The Wild Robot" and had a lot of unhinged and comedic moments as the marketing promised, but I honestly wasn't expecting it to have as much heart and emotion as it did, or that I'd end up loving it so much. 🥲🤎 I fully walked in expecting a "turn your brain off with this whacky adventure" kind of movie and ended up TEARING UP in at least 3 separate times. 😭

Could it at least partially be because the whole "socially awkward girl with no siblings but with a special and close relationship with her grandmother whom she takes care of in old age" thing hit VERY close to home to me?

Maybe. Maybe. 🥲

I don't even fully relate to Mabel TBH but I did see WAY more of myself in her than I expected, and even regardless of that, she was an AMAZINGLY written character, I think she's one of my fav Pixar protagonists and characters now.

And the characters I thought were going to be super annoying like King George, Tom Lizard, Loaf, Ellen, etc. were actually great. Heck, even the antagonist mayor ended up being more fun to watch than I initially thought xD The "final boss" villain though (I won't spoil who it is, but if you've seen the film you'll know who I'm talking about) was actually TERRIFYING, but in a good way. And yes, my theater DID gasp at THAT scene, his "villain origin moment" if you will. Like, WOW. It was funny and shocking at the same time. 😅

Also, I may not have that much knowledge of the "We Bare Bears" franchise, since the most I've seen are a couple isolated episodes here and there and then random clips online, but even with that, I thought this had Daniel Chong's seal all over it, from the character designs to the tone and humor and settings. And that's coming from a VERY casual viewer. In fact, this film kinda made me want to check out a bit more of WBB, I might have been missing out on something x)

Lastly I just want to say that I LOVE the way the film handled its themes and messages, particularly the one about trust and second chances. I feel like nowadays, most animated shows and movies either go the "Everyone is actually good and nice inside and can be redeemed if you just talk to them!" or "If this person has a different point of view than yours they're PURE EVIL and don't even deserve a chance to be reasoned with!" (even my favorite animated show of all time, TOH, kinda fell into the latter). I thought this film reached a VERY good middle ground about it that's actually a lot more applicable to real life. That's all I'm going to say because I don't want to give any big spoilers, it's much better when you see it in the film yourself.

Overall, this movie was very refreshing and a super pleasant surprise to me. I love how invested I felt and how well the characters and themes were handled. It was also funny (mostly) without being mind-numbing or treating its audience like idiots the majority of the time (bombastic side-eye to you, Minions 🙄)