BRIGSBY BEAR (A-minus) - There's a fine line between charming and cloying. The men behind "Brigsby Bear" somehow skip effortlessly along that line, and the movie is never less than winning.
Kyle Mooney ("Saturday Night Live"), who came up with the story and wrote the screenplay with pal Kevin Costello, stars as James Pope, a 20-something newly released from a lifelong confinement in a compound at the hands of a couple who he thought were his parents (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams, both a sight for sore eyes) but who really stole him from the maternity ward and raised him in a remote outpost. The family observed odd rituals -- like those in '60s oddball sitcoms such as "The Addams Family" and "My Favorite Martian" -- such as formally shaking hands before sitting down to dinner. In a bizarre form of mind control, his parents created a weekly cartoon series centered on an improbably heroic space traveler, cuddly Brigsby Bear; dispensed Maoist allegorical guidance, mostly designed to brainwash the boy into subservience ("Curiosity is an unnatural emotion!"); and provided James with a complex serial to obsess over -- manna to any adolescent boy.
James is rescued and returned to his suburban roots -- his birth parents (another winning couple, Michaela Watkins and Matt Walsh (from HBO's "Veep")) and his slacker teenage sister, Aubrey (a delightfully dour Ryan Simkins). Sis grudgingly invites him to a party, where he struggles to fit in (and falls victim to a mystery pill) but eventually bonds with Spencer (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), who looks cool but turns out to be a nerdy fellow traveler. Turns out James, in his childish Brigsby T-shirt and scruff of beard, looks not clueless but like a typical millennial hipster. Spencer and a few others sample copies from the voluminous Brigsby VHS archives, uploading some episodes to YouTube, planting the seeds of an underground cult classic.
Spencer is a wannabe filmmaker, and soon he and James are filming a Brigsby movie, based on James' screenplay and storyboards. They score some props from the police evidence room, courtesy of a sympathetic cop, Det. Vogel (Greg Kinnear, pitch-perfect, as usual), who himself has a geek side and an unscratched acting itch.
That's a fairly neat set-up, and it is executed cleanly by director Dave McCory (a fellow "SNL" staff writer), who gets a lot of small things just right, such as the way that James -- a lovable innocent descended from Chauncey Gardner and Mork from Ork -- types tortured sentences and thank-you's into a Google search bar. The filming of the Brigsby movie is a shoestring affair, and McCory's project itself is an adorably ramshackle ode to unhip outcasts but is never ragged or mawkish.
Not much is explored regarding the incredible trauma James endured. Claire Danes (can she really be 38?) does offer a fine turn as James' frustrated and often incredulous therapist unable to manufacture an emotional breakdown. This certainly could have been a much darker movie; but it's not. Instead, this is an appealing flight of fancy about a man-child's obsession with the only origin story he has known, his unique way of reconciling that trauma. It's also a touching ode to non-traditional family structures.
The cast earnestly brings this home, especially Kinnear and that sideways smile of his. "SNL" big brother Andy Samberg (a producer here) nails a quick cameo as a fellow patient in a mental ward. And Kate Lyn Sheil ("Kate Plays Christine") is mesmerizing as the actress who got corralled to play space twins in the original Brigsby series and who now toils as a waitress in a diner. Sheil perfectly captures the wholesome appeal of that Princess Leia fantasy figure, with eyes that connect deeply with her smitten fanboy.
Easily dismissed as a trifle, "Brigsby Bear" carries a heartfelt message and is held together by Mooney's commitment to the conceit. It's a labor of love about a labor of love.
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