michaelmouse1 Special films like this one come along not often enough. It's emotionally engaging and that's all you need to know. With touches of Donnie Darko, Mysterious Skin and similar works of art that don't fit any set genre, if you are in any way empathetic, it will take you gently by the hand to a place you probably won't expect. The time you spend with this little gem will be well worth every moment. Enjoy the trip!

hfarner As I began to watch this, I turned to my wife, about 10 minutes in, and said this reminds me of Lars and the Real Girl. This movie is different, original, well acted and directed. If you liked Lars and the Real Girl, you will like this. Surreal, makes you really think about the character and what he is going through and the others around him. Great cast.

jtncsmistad I just watched a movie that could have been really stupid. Really silly. Really mindless. And done as an offbeat dramedy is typically tossed out to us from Hollyweirdworld, it surely would have been. But the bunch behind "Brigsby Bear" clearly determined early on that this is what most would be expecting. And they cried a collective, "HELL NO!". The result of such scarce solidarity among the measure of movie making magicians has resulted in a funny, freaky and ultimately touching story. "Brigsby Bear" succeeds in bringing to bear the likes of that which is seldom concocted, nor bankrolled, in the biz of busting the beatific box office. Fabulously fresh faire fully worthy of our focus. As I am not a patron of "Saturday Night Live" I was wholly unfamiliar with "Brigsby Bear" star and co-writer Kyle Mooney. This is an interesting looking, and behaving, guy who put me in the mind of a kind of curious cross of affectation and physical resemblance among Dana Carvey, Steven Wright, Joel Coen and REM bassist Mike Mills. Damn, is that quite the broad-based brotherhood if ever there was one. And while on the subject of eclectic, let's talk about this spectacularly cool cast. It is not just any flick that combines the wildly diverse entertainment resumes of Greg Kinnear, Mark Hamill, Jane Adams, Claire Danes and Andy Samberg (who also Co-Produces here).So what is "Brigsby Bear" about you're no doubt asking? On face, it's about a "well meaning" survivalist couple abducting a baby, who decades later is returned to his birth family as a grown manchild, obsessed with a kid's TV show of which he was an audience of one. But what this quirky and affecting saga is really ABOUT is the definition of family, and the many forms and incarnations defined therein. The overarching message is this-that support, encouragement, understanding and love are not necessarily the stuff of rigidity and tradition. Rather, it is a common bond among souls. Souls that matter to others more than anything in the world. And in the strange case of "Brigsby Bear", it makes little difference whether that connection is forged in "real life" or from the limitless life of the human spirit. After all, isn't this the eternal truth to which each and every one of us bear witness?

evanston_dad I soooo wanted to like "Brigsby Bear." I saw it after coming off a string of depressing, bleak movies about people being nasty and mean to one another, and a film with a big heart full of decent characters all wanting to just do the right thing was appealing. But the screenplay for this movie is just lousy, and the film overall simply does not work because of it.I think the film is meant to strike a satirical tone, kind of a "Napoleon Dynamite" vibe, but it's not confident enough in itself to do it well. It makes a joke out of a dark premise (a child is abducted as a baby and raised by his kidnappers until he's reunited with his birth parents a good 25 years later), which could work under the right circumstances. But it so doggedly avoids dealing with any of the emotional or even just procedural collateral that would come with such a story in its interest to make everything happen easily and neatly. It's like a college student wrote a term paper about a subject he knows nothing about and didn't feel like researching.Greg Kinnear and Mark Hammill are the most recognizable faces that show up in this one. I would add Jane Adams to the list, but she's in a teensy-tiny part of the movie at the very beginning and is never seen again. I know she's not necessarily a major star, but she's a recognizable enough actress that one wonders if there are additional scenes of her that were left on the cutting room floor.Grade: C+