I’ve already reviewed a bit of Chinese animation so it was only a matter of time until I got to the Boonie Bears series/movies.

About Boonie Bears

Boonie Bears is like a CG, ecologist, 21st-century Yogi Bear. The show started with the two bear brothers, the courageous Briar and the bumbling Bramble, and their human foil, Logger Vick, a lumberjack. Initially, the bears try to stop Vick from cutting down the trees of their beloved forest. Vick is usually worrying about his next paycheck while also channeling big Wile E. Coyote energy to build elaborate inventions. Over time, the trio’s adventures move from a rivalry to a friendship. Vick takes on various jobs and often becomes an unlikely ally to the bears. Ultimately, Vick gives up lumbering entirely and becomes a full-time tour guide.

Since 2012, Boonie Bears has spawned nine seasons, six movies, two holiday specials, a preschool show (Boonie Cubs) and a nursery rhymes series (Boonie Cub Tune Club). The preschool and nursery spin-offs feature “kids” or “baby” versions of Briar, Bramble and Vick. Vick becomes a tour guide at the end of the fifth movie and, around the same time, the eighth season of the TV show introduces a new series regular, a tween girl named Zhao Lin. Zhao Lin hangs out with the bears after she comes to stay with a relative, but sadly, she did not seem to appear in the sixth movie. Otherwise, they are joined by more temporary characters.

Boonie Bears is produced by Fantawild Animation, a division of Fantawild, a theme parks operator. The Boonie Bears movies have become a staple of the Chinese New Year movie release period. The first movie earned a total of $40 million at the box office, while the sixth movie earned a total of $100 million at the box-office. The animation improved quickly throughout the movies as well. The second movie gave Vick a more realistic skin texture and improved the look of the fur, snow and trees. By the time of the fifth movie, the landscapes were pretty much photorealistic, with gorgeous water rendering and amazing fall foliage.

Movie ranking

Without further ado, here’s my very serious ranking of the six Boonie Bears films, from best to worst.

1. Boonie Bears 2: Mystical Winter (2015)

This film is a bit like a furry Frozen, but with a magical beast that’s a cross between a polar bear, Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon and Te Ka from Moana. I’d compare it favorably to other magical beast films like Legend of the Neverbeast. What makes this movie unique though is that the main character falls in love with the magical beast. It works because he is a bear himself and because their love is innocent and cute. This is my favorite Boonie Bears film because it has beautiful animation, great character design and cool magical scenes like a flying train and an erupting volcano. I just love how imbued it is in magical realism and how they made it like a fairy tale. I also find it interesting that it offers a bit of an origin story about young Vick and the bear cubs. Plus, it fleshes out the characters a bit more by showing Bramble’s sensitive side and Vick’s northeastern logging town.

2. Boonie Bears 5: The Big Shrink (2018)

In this movie, Vick is working on his tinkering/inventing hobby when his dad comes over for an impromptu visit. As Vick is trying to assemble a shrinking ray, he accidentally shrinks himself and the bears. Movies about the minuscule often use the same ideas (bugs, sewers, garbage trucks, getting stepped on, etc.) and this one is no exception, but the gorgeous animation makes it a solid modern answer to Honey I Shrunk the Kids. The autumn landscapes are breathtaking and the new characters – such as the dad, the chicken and the crayfish – have great character designs. The best thing about the movie though is the exploration of Vick’s relationship with his dad. I didn’t expect Boonie Bears to hit me in the feels like that, but it did! To wrap it all up, there’s an environmental subplot about illegal waste dumping impeding a traditional salmon migration. It nicely gives a sense of greater purpose to the entertaining adventure.

3. Boonie Bears 4: Entangled Worlds (2017)

This movie features a world within a world within a world. “Fantastica” is a fantasy forest hidden within the Boonie Bears forest that was created by a sacred deer to serve as the home of an indigenous clan. The disappearance of the clan is being investigated by an archaeology robot who happens to recruit Vick and the bears to help with its mission. So far so good, but then the story also includes a team of villains from the “real world” who travel to “animated worlds” to steal “animated treasures”. These villains happen to covet a pair of sacred antlers from Fantastica, and so they must enter the Boonie Bears universe to acquire the artifact. These villains come out of nowhere and are even filmed partially in live-action. It is really bizarre and it kind of distracts from the rest of the movie. Still, I enjoyed the feisty little robot, the enigmatic indigenous girl Naya, and Vick’s epiphany about the measure of success. I don’t think they ever explained why Naya is the only one left of her clan though.

4. Boonie Bears 6: Blast Into the Past (2019)

After having been shrunk, the bears and Vick are now transported to prehistoric times. I guess anything is possible in this franchise. In any case, this is a film in the tradition of Stone Age movies like Ice Age, The Croods and Early Man. Their take on it is slick and funny, so I would say it’s overall a good movie, but it doesn’t feel very original. It actually repeats some of the beats used in other Boonie Bears films, like a an erupting volcano, a tearful goodbye with a female child they’ve come to care for, and a flashback to Briar and Bramble losing their mom. It also doesn’t have an environmental message and Vick doesn’t get an opportunity to grow. The upside is that it’s a more comedic entry, but I’d take the weird convoluted story of Entangled Worlds over this safe plot. I have to say though that I enjoyed the cavemen. They were hilarious, well-designed, and the montage where they learn Chinese customs was neat.

5. Boonie Bears: To the Rescue (2014)

To the Rescue is the first movie they made, and I feel like it might be the closest to the early iteration of the TV show. It has a Saturday morning cartoon logic like villains storing a kidnapped baby in a suitcase (?), bandages instantly appearing on the wounds of unconscious men, and Vick pointing an actual hunting gun at the bears (!). By comparison, the second movie felt a lot more polished and cinematographic. The animation is also a lot rougher here, though it’s really not all bad. The baby girl has a cute character design, and she wears adorable bear pajamas. There’s also a hilarious police officer who is competently animated. I think that despite this movie having the worst animation and the simplest story line, it might actually be the funniest of the series. It’s built with a lot of situational comedy and it basically unfolds as a chain of unlucky coincidences, which had me chuckling several times.

6. Boonie Bears 3: The Big Top Secret (2016)

In this movie, Briar gets annoyed with his forest friends and decides to join a traveling circus. It certainly feels derivative of Madagascar 3, not just because it’s about a circus, but because it has the same plot about revamping the circus with flashy new numbers and boosting the troupes’ moral with fun training. The animals-come-acrobats who populate this circus are pretty much the same as the ones in Madagascar 3, down to the jaded leader who used to be the star of the show, but lost the ability to perform following a tragic accident. Even the circus numbers themselves look visually similar to how they looked in Madagascar 3. Moreover, the animation in this film somehow feels like a downgrade from Mystical Winter, though the quality seems unequal from one scene to another. I did enjoy the character designs of the gorilla, the corgis and the parrots, and some shots of the seaside town and hot air balloon finale.

Conclusion

To be honest, I did not hate the Boonie Bears movies. They make solid kids’ films, and they look just as good as American animated films. The biggest drawback is that the premises are not always original. It feels like they are checking boxes: a caveman movie, a shrinking movie, and so on. There’s no larger story, just throwing these characters into random adventures. I guess the connecting thread is that Vick is an inventor and therefore any kind of crazy technology can exist in the Boonie Bears universe. Some ideas do feel fresh, like the legends of the winter spirit and golden deer, and Vick’s relationship with his dad.

I particularly like it when the movies show their regional specificity. At first glance it may look like the bears live in a generic forest, but when the details pertaining to the Chinese Northeast start pouring in, it makes the location much more interesting. It’s pretty clear that the bears are Ussuri brown bears, a large bear species found in Hokkaido, Korea, southeastern Siberia and northeastern China. The indigenous clan from Entangled Worlds was said to have been inspired by the Evenks, an ethnic group of southern Siberia and northeastern China that counts around 27,000 people in Inner Mongolia and 3,000 people in Heilongjiang.

I was especially expecting to hate Logger Vick. Bald, short, single and middle-aged, he seemed to have been designed to be a scorned villain. To my surprise, Vick is… complex. Yes, he engages in illegal logging, but he’s trying to make ends meet, he deals with a difficult boss, he was born into a family of loggers, he followed in the footsteps of his dad even though he resented him for leaving on long logging trips every year. There’s a lot to unpack. It’s actually amazing that six years into the series he decides to have a career change. I can’t think of another series that’s done that before. Logger Vick might actually be the hero we need.