Everyone has certain pop culture touchstones. There are pieces
of ephemera from our formative years that stuck with us as we got older,
molding and shaping our overall worldview. For James (played by Kyle Mooney),
that touchstone is “Brigsby Bear,” an educational
children’s fantasy TV show from the 1980’s. The show followed Brigsby, a magical anthropomorphic bear who fought to keep
the world safe from an evil wizard known as Sun Snatcher through an elaborate
mythology that was developed over the course of more than 700 episodes.
James is now a young man, but Brigsby
has been with him since childhood, providing a source of companionship while
growing up with his parents, Ted (Mark Hamill) and April (Jane Adams), in the
isolated underground bunker where they made their home.
Then one day, the FBI shows up and takes James away. It turns
out that Ted and April aren’t his parents at all; they stole him when he was
just a baby and raised him as their own. Even worse, it turns out “Brigsby Bear” wasn’t a real program. The show was created
especially for him by his kidnappers, and they used it to slip messages of
obedience and docility — “Curiosity is an unnatural emotion!” — in between teaching him multiplication and reminding him to
do his chores.
The sweetly absurd comedy “Brigsby
Bear” deals with what happens after James has the rug pulled out from under him
and he’s reunited with his real parents (Michaela Watkins and Matt Walsh). He
finds himself tossed into a world much more complicated than anything he’s ever
known. A psychiatrist (Claire Danes) attempts to aid in James’s transition, and
he finds a sympathetic ear in a helpful detective (Greg Kinnear) handling his
case.
Through it all, James’s fascination with “Brigsby
Bear” remains, until he decides to direct a “Brigsby”
film of his own and provide some closure to the beloved character’s adventures.
Enlisting the help of his initially skeptical teenage sister, Aubrey (Ryan
Simpkins), and her friends, including a budding animator named Spencer (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), James turns a source of trauma into
something positive. As he introduces his new friends to the wonders of “Brigsby,” he ends up making them love it as much as he
does.
A little bit “Teddy Ruxpin” and a
little bit “Room,” “Brigsby Bear” is less interested
in the darker aspects of its story, aiming instead for a tone of gentle
optimism. Examining fan culture in its various forms, the film demonstrates the
ways pop culture can be either a source of alienation, or a way to connect us
to the world.
At some point, Spencer ends up putting some clips of the show
online (James has to steal his old VHS tapes back from the police station
evidence locker in order to get them). And as people from all over stumble
across the clips, “Brigsby” ends up finding a real-life
audience for the first time.
What begins as something purely for himself, becomes James’
method to re-renter society. “Brigsby Bear” understands how we relate to our
entertainment obsessions: when we find something we love so much that we end up
seeking out other people who love it just as much as we do. And when we find
them, we end up creating a place where we instantly belong.
This article appears in Aug 16-22, 2017.
