danielcooperclark The initial releases - theater and home combined - grossed about $700,000 worldwide. The producers aren't telling what the budget was. Who knows if the revenue covered the production cost. But it sure didn't come close to the $5 million Sony pitched in to distribute it. Maybe they're hoping that over time it'll become a cult classic online. I hope so too. The film deserves success. It's a spirited paean of praise to the transformative power of art and imagination. Of course the "plausibles," as Hitchcock called them, don't warm up to it. But for those willing to be carried along by a vibrant and positive vision, told with a quiet sense of humor, Brigsby Bear hits all the right notes.

jpvl1 Very rare for a movie to capture that moment WE all had growing up. Whether it was BRIGSBY bear or MONKEY magic. The moment only true innocence can phantom. Great movie, well shot, well timed. Our HEROS are real

evanston_dad I soooo wanted to like "Brigsby Bear." I saw it after coming off a string of depressing, bleak movies about people being nasty and mean to one another, and a film with a big heart full of decent characters all wanting to just do the right thing was appealing. But the screenplay for this movie is just lousy, and the film overall simply does not work because of it.I think the film is meant to strike a satirical tone, kind of a "Napoleon Dynamite" vibe, but it's not confident enough in itself to do it well. It makes a joke out of a dark premise (a child is abducted as a baby and raised by his kidnappers until he's reunited with his birth parents a good 25 years later), which could work under the right circumstances. But it so doggedly avoids dealing with any of the emotional or even just procedural collateral that would come with such a story in its interest to make everything happen easily and neatly. It's like a college student wrote a term paper about a subject he knows nothing about and didn't feel like researching.Greg Kinnear and Mark Hammill are the most recognizable faces that show up in this one. I would add Jane Adams to the list, but she's in a teensy-tiny part of the movie at the very beginning and is never seen again. I know she's not necessarily a major star, but she's a recognizable enough actress that one wonders if there are additional scenes of her that were left on the cutting room floor.Grade: C+

ThurstonHunger Cult films usually have an edge, one of weirdness or danger, maybe both. Rarely do they feel like they foster a hope in mankind, sure the Dude Abides, but Brigsby flourishes.I strongly agree with statements here saying the less you know the better, so I'll mark this review as a spoiler and hope folks stumbling across my profile here, just see this based on the rating. My twin teens and myself knew very little about this. In fact I watched about 15 minutes of it alone when my instincts were telling me to trust the film and have the boys join me in watching it.I'm glad they did, and they are as well (rare are the movies where neither one says, "how long have we been watching" which happens even on films they claim to love). But they were committed to this one, and my guess is most teens feel to some degree as estranged as Kyle Mooney's character does in this. Although that character James' story is beyond ludicrous, somehow the filmmakers manage to elicit authentic feelings and resonance from it.And it does with sex, drugs and some "dope as sh*t" mocking. But don't get hung up on that, focus instead on the family bonds. The old cliché of "Who are you and where did my son go" gets turned on its ear. Ultimately the message of creativity as a saving grace or guiding force, is good to hear at any age.My comment to my boys was be the Spencer to someone's James. That character was noble. In Mooney, I see a comic who is both fine with self-denigrating humor that he stays buoyant through and thus winds up as self-affirming. He's done that often in his SNL skits, and this is a promising step out of that box.