Bambi II (2006)

Bambi II arrives with a modest brief and fulfills it without fuss. Set in the unexamined gap between a mother's death and a fawn's adulthood, the film concerns the Great Prince learning to parent a son he had planned to hand off to a doe named Mena. Patrick Stewart lends the father a weary dignity, and the animation is handsome in the direct-to-video fashion of its era, which is to say it looks expensive enough to pass on a shelf. Nothing here suggests ambition beyond a decent afternoon.

On the cultural ledger, the film is a clean page. The forest is populated by animals, voiced without any apparent casting agenda, and their concerns are limited to bullying, absent parents, and a rival fawn named Ronno who has been given dialogue he did not previously require. There is no sermonizing about the environment, though a hunter does loom. There is no critique of wealth among the deer. The romantic triangle involving Faline is resolved by a leap over a ravine, not by a conversation about boundaries. We are left to conclude that a 2006 Disneytoon production aimed at the home-video market had other things on its mind, and said so by saying nothing.

It won an Annie Award for Best Animated Home Entertainment Production, the sort of honor that exists to reassure everyone involved that the venture was worthwhile. The film is harmless, as one reviewer conceded, and it is brief. We classify it accordingly, note the empty column, and move to the next title with the patience of a sommelier rinsing a glass.