Review: Brigsby Bear delightfully dares to be different with offbeat tale of an upbringing gone awry

REVIEW: The serenely strange Brigsby Bear just might bring to mind The Truman Show and Donnie Darko. And perhaps even a faint trace of Room.

BRIGSBY BEAR (M)

Rating: three and a half stars (3.5 out of 5)

Director: Dave Mc Cary (feature debut)

Starring: Kyle Mooney, Greg Kinnear, Matt Walsh, Michaela Watkins, Mark Hamill.

The show must go off ... but how will he go on?

While there are familiar oddities sprinkled here and there that will bring to mind The Truman Show and Donnie Darko - and perhaps even a faint trace of Room - the serenely strange world conjured by Brigsby Bear is as one-of-a-kind as it gets in 2017.

Just walkin’ into the woods carrying a big bear head. As you do.

If a lovely, unpretentious slice of left-of-centre storytelling is what you need, look no further.

James (Kyle Mooney) has spent the first few decades of his life stuck inside a bunker in the desert. His only connection to the wider world is a chipper children’s TV show called Brigsby Bear.

Thousands of episodes of the program have taught James every life lesson worth learning. Or so he thought.

For the time has come for James to discover both his bizarre upbringing as a kid and solitary existence as an adult are complete shams.

Without giving too much away regarding the very slender plotting of the movie, the weirdoes who raised James in a state of artificially enforced loneliness were not his parents at all.

However, upon returning to his biological family and claiming his rightful place in the world, James remains as much removed from society as ever.

If Brigsby Bear was a real TV show, it would rate its socks off.

The reason why? He no longer has the Brigsby show to serve as his small-screen spirit guide.

There is only one solution to this problem, and it is the sincerely honest lengths that James is prepared to take to fix his broken life that becomes the modest calling card of a charming little film.

Brigsby Bear screens in advance previews Friday through Sunday, and opens in full release on Thursday October 26th.

Originally published as Review: Brigsby Bear delightfully dares to be different with offbeat tale of an upbringing gone awry