Brigsby Bear (2017)

Brigsby Bear is far from the easiest movie to think of other films to compare it to. The best I can come up with is the 1999 comedy Blast From the Past, which really seems quite quaint now. Like that Brendan Fraser vehicle the central character in Brigsby Bear was raised alone by his parents in an underground bunker, believing the air above him to be poison, and with little real conception of the outside world. Only James (Saturday Night Live's Kyle Mooney, who also co-wrote the screenplay) parents aren't really his parents, they are a math professor (Jane Adams) and a successful toy designer (Mark Hamill, who is obviously having a blast with his part) who for largely unexplained reasons kidnaped James as an infant to raise in utter isolation. James only real connection with a world beyond his bunker is a campy, retro style children's program titled The Adventures of Brigsby Bear, which father figure Hamill has been secretly producing exclusively for him for the last 25 or so years.

James monotonous life is forever changed when a criminal investigation lead by a Detective Vogel (Greg Kinnear) manages to finally locate him and unite the confused young man with the biological family he had never known, consisting of father Greg (Matt Walsh), mother Louise (Michaela Watkins) and younger sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins). Do to the unique conditions of his upbringing James is a very weird guy, though to be honest I think someone really raised in a scenario like the one in this movie would be even odder. A social worker played by Claire Danes tries to help James family integrate their son with the wider world, and wean him off his obsession with Brigsby Bear, but to little success.

Having only recently become aware of the concept of movies, James wishes to use the recovered props and equipment from the criminal investigation into his faux parents to make a Brigsby Bear feature film. Though he is in essence celebrating the vehicle of his childhood manipulation, James efforts are ultimately therapeutic for him, and the aid he gets from his sisters friends, principally Jorge Lendeborg Jr. and Alexa Demie, helps him learn to socialize and relate with other people, as does leaked clips from Brigsby Bear going viral on the internet and furthering public fascination with James unique case.

This is a very unique movie that manages to walk a very tight tonal line for black comedy meets belated coming of age tale. The film is set in and filmed around Utah and I recognized a number of locations, including two local movie theaters. Brigsby Bear is currently flying mostly under the radar with a very limited theatrical release and a current box office total of less then half a million dollars, yet it seems destined for cult status. An oddball film which while sporting a rather original premise, still feels very much in sync with the nostalgia drenched pop culture of our time. If nothing else I recommend spending a little time looking up Brigsby Bear on YouTube.