We Bare Bears: The Movie

Though not entirely in balance dramaturgically, this feature-length film derived from the series We Bare Bears is elevated by its final quarter, when the special breaks away from the mandatory piling up of cameo roles for significant supporting characters from the series and rises above the straightforward road-movie farce and finally relies on its intended theme. At its core, the original series deals with migration and, through the characters of three bear brothers, conveys the everyday feelings of people who are part of a minority and just want to live their lives and be themselves while also fitting in with the society around them. It is thus no wonder that the filmic culmination of the series could not avoid the topical issue of American internment camps and the separation of children from their families. On the one hand, it elicits hysterical shouts from dim-witted supposed adults that such topics do not belong in children’s shows or that it supposedly constitutes some sort of propaganda and brainwashing of children. On the other hand, as the unsurpassed icon of creating children’s content Fred Rogers said, children actually perceive these issues and need to orient themselves in them because they are bothered by them internally. As a member of an ethnic minority, Daniel Chong conceived the series We Bare Bears from the beginning as a metaphor for his own distressful, clumsy and tragicomic attempts to integrate into society and, at the same time, to find his own place in it. It is thus no wonder that he felt the need not only to express his opinions on this disgusting issue, but also to offer viewers of the series hope that even in a world where something so terrible is happening, there could be a prospect of an optimistic future if we help create it together. There could be no better conclusion of We Bare Bears. (29/12/2020)