Brigsby Bear

25 year old James has been raised his whole life in a secluded location, his only form of entertainment the series "Brigsby Bear Adventures" which he watches on videotapes, enjoying its strange mix of space adventure and maths and moral lessons. But when he suddenly has to face the world and discovers nobody else has ever heard of Brigsby, he becomes increasingly obsessed with sharing it with everybody he knows.

This is, needless to say, a somewhat unusual story. Star and writer Kyle Mooney is a Saturday Night Live vetran, and like much of the SNL spinoffs, it's a film about an obsessed manchild, but in this case, the obsession is treated somewhat differently, not so much a case of pop-culture cool as something far more personal and fundamental. It's also got a surprising sweetness to it - the situation it describes is somewhat extreme but the film isn't particularly interested in mocking James or anyone else. There's some nice supporting turns too from Mark Hammil in a role somewhat unlike his usual work and Greg Kinnear in one of the better roles he's had lately as a police detective who's also a wanna-be thespian. There's a deeper examination about the role of pop culture in our lives than we usually get - about how it may shape us and how the relationship between fan and creation goes both ways, covering both the joy of engagement and the melancholy that pop culture obsession can be a diversion from. A genuinely sweet film.