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The Bear

The Bear

Adventure · Drama · Family · 1988

An orphan bear cub hooks up with an adult male as they try to dodge human hunters.

Movie details

The Bear

“He's an orphan... at the start of a journey. A journey to survive.”

1988 Adventure · Drama · Family 1h 37m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

7.7 / 10

20.1K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

88 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

60 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

7.1 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

An orphan bear cub hooks up with an adult male as they try to dodge human hunters.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Bear?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Belle and Sebastian: Next Generation

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The Fox and the Hound

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Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle

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The Call of the Wild

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Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Jean-Jacques Annaud

Written by

Gérard Brach

Tchéky Karyo

Tchéky Karyo

Tom

Bart the Bear

Bart the Bear

The Kodiak Bear

Douce the Bear

Douce the Bear

Youk the Bear Cub

Jack Wallace

Jack Wallace

Bill

André Lacombe

André Lacombe

The Dog Hunter

Bozo the Bear

Bozo the Bear

The Mama Bear (uncredited)

Court is in session

Put The Bear on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Prestige Tourist

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.