The Adventures of Brer Rabbit (2006)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Clever writing and character designs, excellent voice work, and surprisingly good animation for a straight-to-video release. I've read the original Uncle Remus stories to my son (age 5), as well as other "rabbit" stories from Caribbean and Gullah traditions, and West African Anansi stories. Kids love tricksters, and this is a nice way to introduce some of the classic stories. No, it isn't "Song of the South" (a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which way you look at it--they did a nice job with the songs in this, though), and (spoiler alert!). . . . . . I could have done without the "Brer Rabbit sees the error of his ways and becomes a good friend" piece of the arc, but wrapping up with a faithful and well-paced treatment of the best-known Brer Rabbit tale rescues it. The only way you'll do better on currently-available video is to comb through the back catalog of Weston Woods/Scholastic films for the shorts based on picture-book retellings of individual stories. And that could take a while.

I found this film at the bottom of the bargain bin at Walmart. The fact there was an adaptation of the Uncle Remus stories starting Wayne Brady and Wanda Sykes meant it had to be interesting at the very least. I was expecting it to be quite terrible in a laughable kind of way.However, it is a very well animated film with a talented voice cast. The character designs were wonderful and the overall art direction was well developed. The score was excellent but the songs were on the verge of unbearably cheesy, if not unnecessary.Only complaints were that some of the jokes and gags missed the mark a little in a tired hackneyed way. But those moments were short lived. Also, there wasn't enough Wayne and Wanda! The Uncle Remus stories are a paradoxical dilemma for American audiences. This adaptation removes the social stigmas of Post-Civil War themes but preserves important folk stories of African-American heritage, exposing these tales to a generation that might have otherwise missed this experience.

I just watched this movie with my kids. We all loved it. They've seen the original Song of the South and we all love that as well. I miss the mixture of live action with animation that was in the first one. I especially missed the original music but, the music in "Adventures" was very good. The animation in this movie was excellent and I thought all the characters were well played, especially Brer Rabbit. No doubt the Uncle Remus character was replaced by Brer Turtle. So, in some ways it was better than the original and in others it wasn't. We'll watch it again! We're hopeful that one day Disney will pay tribute to another great example of how African Americans have helped define American culture!

The film features many of today's notable Black entertainers. My girls (4 & 7 y.o.) are loving it. It is a great way to keep these traditional stories alive. It is also a good way to teach children about contrasting mediums (film vs. writing). You may be also get them to read the stories in various editions. The songs are great! They too are part of the Black cultural traditions. The film does a good job of presenting both sides of morality, that someone can do good and bad things. I am thoroughly enjoying myself watching the film with my children. It retells the stories I know plus many I don't. Great for the whole family.