Two Brothers (Full Screen Edition)

This is a great movie for the whole family. I saw it in the theater with my grandaughter, who was 6 at the time. She really enjoyed it and so did I. We enjoyed talking about the film afterward and the message of the movie. Besides the entertainment value, "Two Brothers" teaches the values of brotherly love, caring and compassion for others, and protecting animals. As a teacher, I plan to show this movie to my 5th graders as a springboard to discussion and writng.

Not since the feature film, Born Free have I enjoyed a nature-themed drama so much, but with two adorable tiger cubs as the stars, how could Two Brothers fail? Exotic locations, authentic costumes and magnificent animal handling make this adventure something worthwhile for all ages. Set in the jungles of 1920's French Indo-China, the story begins as a pair of magnificent tigers mate and produce a pair of male cubs. For an all too brief time, the family enjoys life in the solitude and tranquility of long-abandoned ancient jungle temples. It isn't long before an artifact smuggling expedition led by an intrepid dealer(Pearce) stumbles onto their lair. To protect his family, the male attacks a worker and is killed by the dealer. Feeling some remorse, he takes one cub for safekeeping, as the mother and remaining cub escape into the wilderness. A year or so later, after a series of events, the first cub ends up in a traveling circus while his brother ends up an exhibit in a royal zoo. To bolster his masculine image after failing to shoot the cubs' mother, the prince arranges a public fight between the two fully-grown tigers, unaware that they are brothers. It's expected that the beasts will tear one another apart in front of the bloodthirsty crowd, but all are astounded when the tigers recognize one another and simply proceed to play with and bathe each other. Enraged, the Prince's guards and the highly-compensated circus trainers prod and tease the pair, but it backfires and the brothers turn on the humans. The pair take off into the jungle, followed by revenge-minded bad guys. Fortunately, the son of a French commissioner(Highmore) who'd fallen for one of the cubs a year or so earlier, and the relic trader(Pearce) join forces to save them before harm can come to the pair. How the domesticated animals survive and outwit their pursuers is captivating and amusing. It's an exciting and colorful adventure that's far better than the meager publicity it received upon its release at theaters.

I wasn't sure what to expect from a kids movie about a ferocious tiger, but it turned out to be fun, heart-warming, and inspiring. I hope many of our kids today learn to love the greatest of the cats through this movie.

I'm a sucker for French movies and this is one of the best. The director has a long resume that includes such sensual classics as Marguerite Duras' "THE LOVER" and the new movie carries on in that tradition. Basically the story is of two tiger cubs who play together with their mother and father and then get separated . . . The matching subplot shows us a French woman, tall and attractive, trapped in a miserable marriage to a chubby bureaucrat with a shoddy little governor's job in the back of nowhere. All her life she yearns to go back to France, symbolized by the way she keeps a tiny statue of the Eiffel Tower at the bottom of her fishbowl. She has a son she loves, little Raul, played by the charming child star Freddie Highmore from the Johnny Depp movies. And yet she is unsatisfied, like Madame Bovary, in exile from everything and everyone she loves, and she feels unattractive as a woman, for her husband, the Governor, is far more concerned with advancing a scheme to build a "Temple Road" through Thailand to produce tourist trade enough to attract the attention of Air France. He is a foolish man, a good man of course, but he does not know how "to please a lady."

Mrs. Normandin is played by the gorgeous, fortyish Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, an icon in France but little known in the USA. As the governor's wife, Mrs. Normandin is expected to back up her husband in his crude climb to the top, his gross flattery of the Prince he secretly despises. But her femininity, so long undervalued by the Governor, is about to make a dramatic comeback once she makes the acquaintance of "Bring 'Em Back Alive" explorer Aidan McRory, played by Australian actor Guy Pearce with his cheekbones highly polished by the Thai sun. One look at McRory and Mrs. Normandin feels faint all over, as though she has just discovered the value and meaning of love.

Is it love? Wisely, director Jean-Jacques Annaud lets us decide. In one comical scene, little Sangha is playing with Raul under the dinner table, while McRory and Mrs. Normandin are playing with their food above, while her husband natters on about his plans. Sangha accidentally moves a shoe next to Mrs. Normandin's foot and she naturally thinks that her explorer hero is playing "footsie" with her! When Sangha moves the shoe to McRory's foot, his eyes bug out of his head as he believes she is making a pass at him with her husband right there! Some great, sophisticated sex stuff worthy of Ernst Lubitsch--surprising to see such sexual truth in the middle of a child's film.

I love also the part where Mrs. Normandin reads one of McRory's bestselling adventure books to Raul and Sangha as they lie sleeping in bed, and she rubs her thumb slowly over the engraved portrait of the handsome daredevil. It's a study in passionate longing, thwarted by convention and the trap of the marriage bourgeois.

What can I say. This movie is OUTRAGEOUS! I will start with the fact I am a lover of all cool/beautiful animals and good people and now, the plot of this movie. Two tiger cubs at first have a good life with their loving parents, then evil hunters come, raid the forest of riches, KILL THE FATHER FOR PROTECTING HIS CUBS, and then after maiming the mother in the ear, take the cubs to the village, are thanked for killing a tiger just because they have no option but to kill cattle, then the cubs and a whole lot of other tigers are either killed, tortured, abused or said to be monsters. Why? FOR BEING WHAT THEY ARE AND DEFENDING THEMSELVES AGAINST OTHER MEAN ANIMALS AND EVIL PEOPLE! And, oh yeah, the same man who started this by killing their father and trying to kill their mother not only then had the nerve to try and be friends with the cubs, he also wanted to kill them in the end because he said "they didn't know how to hunt and will be man eaters" BULLS**T! He knows that he made them live their lives with only cruelty and evil from cubhood to adulthood, and he wants to make it a perfect fit by killing the now full grown tigers and making it so their lives started hellish and ended hellish. Thank God they survive and get back to their mother. Dammit, I already had wrath before I saw this. Afterwards, I was more relentless and unforgiving towards those who would hurt animals and good people than ever! Oh s**t, I nearly forgot! That kid who said the whole: "Stupid tiggers" and "sensitive jerks" and "call me a speciest, I'll take it as a compliment."? He needs to be mutilated. As do all the hunters and evil people in Two Brothers. And a message to director Jean Jaques Annad-You say you love tigers? I don't believe you for one miserable second. You are a tiger hater and that is why you made this film the way you did. GO TO HELL. Thank you all. I've said enough, even though there's more, that would take all day. NEVER SEE THIS MOVIE! EVER!