Brigsby Bear

Cert: 12A; Now showing

It is probably safe to say that no matter what sort of a film you imagine Brigsby Bear to be, it isn’t that. This first movie creation for director Dave McCary and writers Kevin Costello and Kyle Mooney, who also stars in the film, is difficult to classify but it feels like a kind of mumblecore hybrid between Napoleon Dynamite, Patty Hearst and Frank. It’s funny, sweet and a tiny bit odd.

James (Mooney) lives in post-apocalyptic isolation with his parents Ted (Mark Hamill) and April Hope (Jane Adams). He is 25, an only child who has, because of the danger he has been told lurks in the air, never left his underground home in the Utah desert. James’s main outside interest are the episodes of sci-fi bear Brigsby which are delivered to him every week.

A police swoop reveals that there was no apocalypse, it was invented to hide from James that he had been stolen as a baby. Charming detective Vogel (Greg Kinnear) delivers him back to his real family, the Popes (Michaela Watkins and Matt Walsh) and his less than delighted sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins). James is bewildered rather than traumatised by a world in which he has much to catch up on. If there is some parable about millenials being ill-equipped for the real world, the lesson is interesting. However there is a moral peculiarity around sweet old Mark Hamill being the lovable child abductor but the film doesn’t pretend to be a serious study, it sprinkles ideas among laughs and works surprisingly well.