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Verdict: A bland and largely uninventive animated tale about a young man transformed into a bear.

By CHARLES PASSY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

More than anything, what traditional hand-drawn animation needs right now is another Lilo & Stitch. Another film of gloriously goofy invention that shows the medium still has the ability to tell a story in a colorful, creative way.

Brother Bear is not that film.

Mind you, there's nothing offensive about Brother Bear. It's a perfectly play-it-safe children's entertainment, a Disney picture that borrows bits of the roaring attitude of Lion King and the one-with-nature vibe of Pocahontas.

But it fails to match the ambition of either of those previous efforts from the studio, especially in the visual and music departments. Instead, it feels like a project that got quietly pushed through the pipeline while the studio gears up for bigger and better things.

The story takes place ages ago in the snow-covered Pacific Northwest. Three Native American brothers — Kenai, Denahi and Sitka — must come to terms with the fate that awaits them, symbolically represented by the totem the local Shaman reveals to them. When the headstrong Kenai (voiced by Joaquin Phoenix of Gladiator fame) learns that his totem is a carved bear, representing love, he feels shortchanged. Why not something more powerful?

And then, after he loses Sitka, his elder brother, in a horrible clash with a bear, Kenai goes seeking revenge and kills the presumably beastly creature. But don't mess with Mother Nature, Kenai learns: Sitka's ghost comes back and teaches his immature sibling a lesson by transforming him into — what else? — a bear.

And it's as a bear that Kenai eventually befriends a precocious cub, Koda (Jeremy Suarez of TV's The Bernie Mac Show), and discovers the true meaning of brotherly love.

The Disney team behind the picture, especially directors Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker, emphasize the fable-like quality of the tale at the expense of giving it a little more edginess or sense of subversion. (That's what made Lilo & Stitch such an unabashed delight.)

This being Disney, there's still some comic relief in the form of a pair of dumb-and-dumber moose (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, reprising their clueless Canadian characters from their Second City days). But it's just that: relief. It might have been more interesting to see Disney build an entire animated picture around those moose.

Otherwise, a sense of blandness prevails throughout Brother Bear. The animation is neither ground-breaking nor lushly reminiscent of the studio's golden era; it just does the job without any excitement. Ditto Phil Collins' songs and score: The music is nice enough but utterly disposable.

Still, the story will engage children, even if younger ones might find some man-vs.-bear scenes a little too intense. Adults, on the other hand, will crave a little more intensity — or at least a little more energy or sense of mission. Instead, Brother Bear feels like a paint-by-numbers effort.