The Bear (film)

The Bear, (also known as L'Ours) is a 1988 adventure film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (who would years later do Two Brothers). It is adapted from the novel The Grizzly King.

After his mother is killed in a freak accident, an orphan bear cub hooks up with a wounded Kodiak bear as they try to dodge human hunters.

Not to be confused with Bear, which is a direct-to-video horror film that also features bears.

The film uses the following tropes:

 * Badass: The Kodiak
 * Everything's Worse with Bears: Averted with the cub, but played straight with the hunters.
 * Expy - Coincidentally, Brother Bear and the Disneynature documentary film Chimpanzee share similarities.
 * Family-Unfriendly Death: The death of the cub's mother as well as several other animals throughout.
 * Family-Unfriendly Violence: While a majority of the violence is offscreen, the film tends to get quite gruesome despite its PG rating.
 * Gentle Giant: The Kodiak towards the cub. The hunters however. ..
 * Mercy Kill: One of the hunters has to put down their horse.
 * Mushroom Samba: When the young cub eats some mushrooms, we are given a trippy sequence.
 * The Film of the Book: The film is based on a book from 1916.