The Country Bears (2002)

HOO OH BOY this looks weird... Although after last month's Disney Week pick; the decidedly bizarre and slightly unsettling Can of Worms, I'm not sure it can get much more weirder than that to be honest... but I feel like this movie is really going to give it a try. 2002's The Country Bears appears to be about a... adopted bear brought up as a human boy, discovering he is adopted, running away from home, joining a band and making it famous... or at least so I can tell having watched the trailer. I mean, it looks a bit formulaic: there is the coming of age element, a slapstick police chase and what looks like a big crescendo at the end but I'd be lying if I said I'm not at least a little bit intrigued. It apparently properly underperformed at the box office, grossing $18 Million against a budget of $35 Million, which as a result lead to the prospective sequel being cancelled, so I'm also quite intrigued to find out why it struck such a negative chord with audiences. No err... pun intended...

"Mom, am I adopted?" asks Beary Barrington (voice: Haley Joel Osment), as he - a very obvious looking bear in a t-shirt, sits at the breakfast table with his quite obviously human family, with them strenuously denying he is in fact: adopted. And yes. This is how we are opening this movie. Despite being quite OBVIOUSLY a bear, and that fact somehow being denied from him, Beary has developed a talent for playing the guitar and singing, and looks up to a band called The Country Bears who disbanded in 1991. Willie Nelson himself says he genuinely learned alot from them. Yes that's actually in the movie. After Dex (Eli Marienthal) - his "brother" breaks it to Beary that he was in fact adopted. Beary packs his guitar, runs away from home and sets out to Country Bear Hall - spiritual home of The Country Bears to see if he can find where he belongs. He arrives just in time to learn that Banker and all round douchebag Reed Thimple (Christopher Walken) is planning to have Country Bear Hall demolished as the owners have fallen behind on mortgage payments. Henry (voice: Kevin Michael Richardson) explains to Beary that they need to find $20,000 (like, is that it?...) or Bear Hall is reduced to rubble. Beary has this wild idea that maybe a fundraiser concert would save the hall and that the band could get back together to play but Henry shoots it down in flames before Beary even gets started. Meanwhile Beary's distraught parents report him missing and Officers Hamm (Daryl Mitchell) and Cheets (Diedrich Bader) are dispatched to track him down. After a bit of a pep talk... sort of... from Big Al (voice: James Gammon), Henry - the former manager of The Country Bears is persuaded to at least give it a shot at getting the band back together and leaves Big Al in charge of Country Bear House whilst he and Beary are on the road. Their first stop is at a movie set for American singer Krystal (Krystal) where Fred Bedderhead (Brad Garrett) - former Harmonica and Bass player for the band works as security. He's easily convinced enough to take part and directs the gang to 'The Swarmin' Hive' Honey Club, which I guess is this movies way of euphemising alcohol abuse... where Zeb Zoober (Stephen Root) - former Fiddle player for the band is known to hang out. Zeb explains that even if he wanted to play the show, he couldn't leave the bar as he owes the owner, who he calls Cha Cha (Queen Latifah) too much money. Beary has a brainwave and talks Queen Latifah / Cha Cha into letting Zeb off the debt if Zeb can beat the house band in musical play off. In return for the tour bus if Zeb loses. Much to the dismay of the rest of the group. After a bit of a rusty start, Zeb eventually finds his old skills again and manages to get the better of the band and win the bet. Back at Country Bear Hall and Officers Hamm and Cheets turn up and after speaking to Big Al, owing to his truncated way of talking, are misunderstood into believing that Beary has been kidnapped by Henry. Back on the Bus, Zeb leads the gang onto the next band member; Tennessee O'Neal (voice: Toby Huss) - former One-String Guitarist who is working as a marriage councillor. They are all hanging out in a nearby restaurant trying to convince Tennessee to join the band when the news breaks on TV that Beary has been kidnapped. Almost immediately afterwards in walk Officers Hamm and Cheets, and the bears make a break for it with the police in hot pursuit! But after the bus driver Roadie (M. C. Gainey) has the ingenuous idea of hiding by going through the car wash, there is a bit of a slapstick routine that leaves the police behind and the bears still on the road. After stopping at a motel, Beary phones Dex and tells him that he hasn't been kidnapped and is on the road trying to reunite The Country Bears, despite not believing him, Dex asks him when he'll be home to which Beary remorsefully replies that he won't... He then discovers that Tennessee's ex-girlfriend Trixie St. Claire (voice: Candy Ford) - the band's former Keyboardist also just so happens to be playing nearby that night! And after Tennessee goes to see her sing, the pair end up sharing a ballad which leads to Tennessee agreeing to take part in the reunion. After the bears mistakenly stop by Elton John's (Elton John) place, they eventually catch up with the final missing band member; Ted Bedderhead (voice: Diedrich Bader) - Singer and Guitarist. Ted seems to be doing pretty well for himself since the band split, hanging out in his mansion with his rich friends and he initially wants nothing to do with his old bandmates or entertain the idea of playing a show again with them. He sends them packing, giving them the impression he's moved on to bigger and better things but when Fred, Ted's brother refuses to leave so easily, he discovers that Ted is actually just the singer for a wedding band and not so rich and successful after all! He eventually is convinced to join the rest of the group by way of a little light persuasion from Fred; that light persuasion being a paw swipe to the jaw. But still refuses to take part in the reunion and scalds Beary for not knowing anything about the real band, calling the reunion pointless. Beary realising the reunion isn't going to happen suddenly has a bit of an introspective moment when he remembers his family back home are upset about him being missing and appears to... run... all the way... back home... for what must have been miles... to his very relieved and emotional parents. After the bears read a letter that Beary accidently left behind on the tour bus, they have a change of heart, and Ted visits Beary personally to apologise. He confirms to Beary that they are going to do the show and that Beary and his family can come along too, but when they go to leave Roadie runs up to them and cries that the bus has been stolen! For... some reason... Reed Thimple has stolen the bus? And taken the rest of the band hostage... Using a device that Beary also accidentally left of the bus, Dex uses a tracker and commandeering the family minivan, they race to wherever the bus is being held. Reed meanwhile reveals he captured the bears to prevent them from doing the reunion show and that he never recovered from them beating him in a talent show 30 years ago, revealing that he is actually Benny Bogswaggle, the armpit musician... its... oh I can't be bothered to explain. And that his entire life has been about plotting his revenge for them humiliating him. But crashing onto the scene, and flying through the window of the factory, Ted arrives on the scene and frees the bears from the cell and err... that's it. They're back on the road again in the next scene. That run-time absorbing mild peril deal with, they arrive at Country Bear Hall expecting a jam packed audience only to find the place empty, with Reed Thimple counting his money inside, having brought off the promoter for the show. But Big Al appears and reveals that the whole crowd are actually out in the backfield, and swinging open the doors, there is a massive rush as people cram into the old barn to see the show hustling Reed out of the way as they do. In the closing scene, after Henry announces that Country Bear Hall is saved, Beary joins the rest of the band onstage to play as part of their reunion show.

Hmm... I don't know about this one... It was... ok. There was bits of it I liked, I did quite like how it became a kind of parody of the old 'getting the band back together' kind of stories that you see and how they paraphrased it with everyone being bears and stuff. And there was some amusing gags. But the musical numbers and the cameos didn't really do anything for me and I felt like the story kind a ran out of steam. It was entertaining enough, but to be honest I did struggle to maintain an interest a bit towards the end as the main kind of focus of the movie was wrapped up and they meandered around a bit until the conclusion. A shame because I felt like it had built some kind of potential that it then just squandered. I guess one plus is that once you get passed the whole; they are all bears co-existing with humans kind of premise it becomes much less weird and... dare I say... a little bit more wholesome?

So I guess let's start with the positives. The costume and character design was pretty top notch. The bears did err maybe a little bit on the side of the uncanny valley but each bear felt like they had their own character. Even if Trixie's character was basically reduced to: female love interest. But it would have been fairly easy for individual personality types to have gotten lost in translation, but the movie took steps to make sure each character was distinguishable which helped and went some way to making the whole thing that little bit more interesting to watch.

An in terms of a storyline, it was largely fairly good. As mentioned, the whole movie followed the journey of reuniting the bears and bringing them back together to play the show. It's a formula that has been used before in similar movies taking a similar approach but I guess the twist here being that they are all 10 foot tall bears... but it was well executed. It did feel a bit rushed in stages as they moved on to one scenario after the next but it was a good backbone upon which the rest of the movie was built and potentially really the only direction you could take a movie that intended to focus on a country music band fronted by bears... but yeah I liked it.

And similarly although I didn't really care for the musical numbers, and the cameos by potentially famous American musical acts (?) were lost on me, I can appreciate that the musical numbers for the most part were well done. Including the original songs that were attributed to The Country Bears in the movie. Not really to my taste but even as an outsider I didn't feel like they were really cringe or really simple. They were fine, and fitting for the movie. Even some of the softer ballads didn't feel too ridiculous when they are being sung by two people in comically oversized bear costumes so I guess that's a positive?

But unfortunately it's in some very key areas that this movie falls down and primarily for me it's with the plot. The first hour or so of the movie trundles along quite nicely as they build the; travelling around, tracking down the bears and reforming the band scenario against the police trying to find Beary and reunite him with his family. Then that all just sort of falls apart and the movie goes into semi-meltdown. The police disappear and are never heard from again after a weird kind of scene that suggested there would be a resolution that never appears... then there is the frankly odd and confusing moment where the tour bus is stolen and the bears briefly locked up only to be immediately freed and back on the road again almost straight after with no resolution? It sort of feels like they got so far with it and then ran completely out of ideas on how to neatly bring everything to a close and it just collapses into a sloppy mess.

Compounding that there are some real issues with the formulaic nature of the movie, as if there are like 4 or 5 checkboxes that the movie absolutely has to tick off in order to get green lit. Which are all tropes and hallmarks of pretty much every Disney movie you might ever watch. I don't think every Disney movie needs to have a coming of age story baked into it. And not every Disney movie needs to have an emotional realisation baked into it. But we get both of those here built into what is already quite a formulaic approach with the band reunion scenario. I admit, I enjoyed the latter as it gave the movie some substance but it becomes just another Disney movie once you factor in the aforementioned tropes and I think here, it hurt the movie more than it did it any good and it would potentially have been better to just give the movie it's own style and approach rather than force it to fit the Disney mould.

And I haven't really touched on it before now but Christopher Walken, as good as he is, is horribly mis-cast in this one and he does absolutely nothing for this movie. This is not his finest work as a movie villain and I don't think he's ever really given the creative freedom or licence to really express himself in this one. It's just a bad fit and it shows. Really badly.

And unfortunately, as interesting as the character design was, and as entertaining as the initial story and plot is, beyond that there isn't really much else in terms of substance. I didn't really find the police slapstick stuff or any of their character interactions really that funny. Maybe that bit was lost on me. And the musical numbers although not really to my style admittedly, came across as very pedestrian and middle of the road. It all felt a little bit bland and vanilla and playing it very safe ironically. And there wasn't really anything that pushed the envelope or threatened to get creative. It all felt very bland and routine. And as a result there was a significant loss of character for a movie that could have been more exciting and more interesting when based on a travelling band of country singing bears from rural America.

A bit disappointing I think this one. It was ok but mostly unremarkable and that's a shame because I feel like it could have been better and could have been alot more fun with a bit more imagination. It all felt very much Disney by numbers and whilst it looks like some effort was made to try and set it apart from other productions; with the costume design, with the musical cameos, I do feel like it fell short really of being a full on blockbuster, seat filling production. Which is what I think they were ultimately aiming for. It was decent but honestly, I can't think of anything that was interesting enough to pull me back for a second watch. 2 out of 5.