Critics reviews

Despite the enormous and very evident technical expertise involved in making the film, Annaud never manages to dispel memories of those Disney features in which animal behaviour was presented in human terms... it's simply a ripping yarn, too prone to anthropomorphism to work successfully as a proper study either of ursine behaviour or of our own relationship to their world.

The Bear's opening title and 657 words may not seem like much, but they're more than enough to establish a frame of reference that is completely foreign to the bears, and the effect of this verbiage is so intrusive and destructive to the film's higher aims that it's difficult to understand why Annaud and Brach included it; certainly the story as a whole could have been told nearly as well without any words at all.

If you think you were traumatized when they shot Bambi's mother, just wait till you see "The Bear." Mud-and-guts director Jean-Jacques Annaud, who fictionalized the discovery of both fire and the missionary position in "Quest for Fire," leaves little to the imagination in this buddy movie for bears... Well, it is a French film after all, part bedroom farce, part National Geographic special, but mostly an animal horror story... It's certainly harrowing to sit through.

I am sure it took great patience on the part of the filmmakers to obtain the shots of the bears fishing for trout, but the scene plays like a moment stolen from life. Other scenes – of horseplay and genuine struggles – gradually build up our sense of the personalities of these animals. There is always a temptation to interpret the behavior of animals in terms of human personality, and “The Bear” indulges that temptation, but there are also moments to remind us that these are wild beasts for whom killing, and being killed, is a fact of life.

''The Bear,''... is a remarkable achievement only on its own terms, which happen to be extremely limited and peculiar. No less amazing than the material Mr. Annaud has captured on the screen is the fact that he has gone to such crazily elaborate lengths to capture it at all.

And though the outline of the movie’s story... may suggest a male-bonding version of “Bambi,” the material never gets weepy or cloying. Annaud and his collaborators charge it with a sweep and exhilaration startling for a family-oriented movie. You’d have to go back to the island section of Carroll Ballard’s 1979 “The Black Stallion” to find something comparable.