Customer Reviews

Little Polar Bear [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My daughter, 2.5 years, absolutely adores this movie, just as much as she loves the books. The plot in itself is not very realistic, but then again childrens animated movies usually aren't; Animals talk, friendships grow between two spieces enemies in nature (an other example Disney's "Fox and Hound") and the locations have all the details wrong... Refreshingly this movie has no violence and lots of sweet moments which makes it suitable for the youngest viewers.

When I first got this on D.V.D I thought it would be an average cutesy film but I was wrong THIS MOVIE ROCKED one of the best films about friendship I have ever seen in my life BREATHTAKING SCENERY ,MYSTIFYING MUSIC and SOME OF THE COOLEST CHARACTERS YOU COULD RELATE TOO this film has everything but the best thing about this movie was the lesson which was FRIENDS CAN COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES NO MATTER WHAT THE DIFFERENCES ARE everytime I keep watching this film It always makes me cry and it is suitable for all of the family

Sweet animated film about a baby polar bear's friendship with a baby seal. Despite the "fish eating machine"(which kills No animals), my 4 year old loves the movie. Nice change of pace from Disney animations, which often seem to include violence and death.

I purchased this DVD for my husband who taught elementary school for 35 years. He has always loved Polar Bears and the different books about Lars were read to our sons all the time and now to our grandsons. Both "Papa" and grandsons (ages 5 & 3) watched this DVD three days in a row. It teaches about family and friendship which does not seem to be that important in today's society so much. I would recommend this as a great DVD for all ages.

My grandson, age 2, absolutely loves Lars. This is the second purchase in this video series, and he watches each one when he needs quiet time to relax. This is a gentle story, I like it too.

...but not enough explanation of some events. i'll spare a re-telling of the story since other reviewers have provided that information. the "black mouth", an apparently computer-driven unmanned fishing vessel,is not explained at all. we are left to ponder it's sudden appearance in the story.

i wondered to myself why lena and her grandmother had a refridgerator until my wife pointed out that the movie is depicting the native inuit people in a modern setting. so why not have a fridge in the arctic? keeps food away from animals outside. the fishsticks that lena offers lars was a bit odd...unless the inuit prepare fish in a way that they call fishsticks...again, not explained.

when the tribe is chanting they keep repeating the same phrase again and again, "the black mouth is eating all our fish", but they do nothing about it. lena apparently stays in a trance until lars, with help from caruso, the penguin. he must be the strongest non-flying bird ever since he alone is able to keep the mechanical "black mouth" open long enoug for the trapped seals, fish and bears (oh my!) to escape.

lars unintentional trip to the south is also left to interpretation. there is a hippo, a parrot and an eagle but never is it understood where they are other than the nebulus "south". this caused my five year old to ponder if they were in hawaii.

she also wanted to know why, when lars was about to be overtaken by the "black mouth" he couldn't just swim under it to avoid it altogether.

sure, it's okay to leave some things up in the air to let people use their imaginations but the little polar bear leaves too many gaps. we can only assume that the beached (iced?) ship is connected to the abandoned igloo that the animals play in.

all in all the story is told without violence-excellent, with imaginative animation-the under water scenes with lars and mika, his dad, are wonderful, and with humor. the story could have been condensed in some places to add a bit of continuity in other places.

I gave it to my 3-1/2 yr. old Grandson.......I think it is a little "old for him".....he gets bored 1/2 way through.

This one's not too good. This cartoon movie tells the story of Lars, a young polar bear, who can't swim until he learns from Robbie, a friendly young seal. Lars and Robbie aren't supposed to be friends, however, because bears and seals don't get along, and the bully bears in Lars's pack convince his Dad to give him a fatherly talking-to. But Lars doesn't want to give up his friend. The resolution is Lars's idea: if the seals agree to bring fish to the bears, the bears won't attack them. I could understand teaching children that bears are predators, but the idea that the strong force the weak to pay tribute is not exactly the lesson I want my child to be learning at his age.
The next adventure starts when Lars falls asleep on the ice, which breaks off and drifts southward to some place that looks like the Amazon (with Caribbean music). There Lars befriends Old Henry the hippopotamus, who brings him to Marcus the eagle, who finally deposits him with a killer whale, who is only too glad to bring Lars back to his home.
Finally, the seals discover a major problem: all the fish in the ocean have disappeared. This naturally threatens their recent truce with the polar bears. The humans in the "village" (an Eskimo girl and her grandmother, who live in a hut with a refrigerator and eat fish sticks) can't find any fish either; a malevolent and apparently unmanned tanker is swimming through the ocean, swallowing up all the fish with some kind of mechanical jaw-device. The tanker goes on to swallow all the seals, and many of the polar bears too, until Lars decides to lure it towards a sharp rock, where it crashes, allowing everyone to escape and praise Lars.
All in all, this ranks pretty low on the imagination scale.