Ernest is a poor bear down on his luck (and money. And food) and Celestine is a dentist-apprentice/page mouse who doesn’t really like her job all that much and doesn’t care that Bears are supposed to eat Mice and that Mice should be scared of Bears. Once caught by Ernest the hungry bear, she lays out her case for why he shouldn’t be eating her, and – wouldn’t you know it? Ernest puts her down. They become friends. Then they get into trouble rummaging for food and bear teeth (baby bear teeth are used by dentist mice to give rodents a new set of teeth when their own pair gets worn down). Which gets them into trouble with their respective societies, who behave in startlingly similar ways: vociferous rejection of even the consideration of the possibility that a Mouse (because they weren’t really considering Celestine, per se) and a Bear (because they weren’t really considering Ernest personally either, really) could be friends.

Ernest and Celestine is a heartwarming story about prejudice and friendship that also plays with the nonsensical motivations behind our prejudices: in one scene, Celestine asks the bear mother sitting at the front row of the courtroom whether Celestine terrifies her personally, and the mother shakes her head, no, before making eye contact with the judge and realizing she had slipped out of her role as a Bear in Bear Society. (She subsequently makes up for her slipup by screaming her lungs out and fainting, if I remember correctly, just to make sure there’s no room for doubt that yes, Mice are terrifying to Bears.)

Personally, while the entire movie was quite satisfying and the ending didn’t leave me with much to ask for, I did wonder whether the resolution of the larger picture issue (prejudice) should have eclipsed the resolution of the smaller issue (since Ernest and Celestine did break the law after all, and the family they stole from had their entire store totaled, their stock of candy for said store depleted).

Ernest and Celestine is available both as a regular DVD and as a Blu-ray.