Rating: D
Dir: Sean McNamara
Star: Riley Smith, Michele Greene, Fred Dryer, Courtney Peldon
After roughly thirty seconds in the company of whiny teen Josh Harding (Smith), I was firmly on #TeamBear. Being eaten alive was too good for him, as he drove with mother Rachel (Greene) to their new home in the rural community of Pine Lake. They don’t quite get the friendly welcome expected, due to a town spat over plans for a new wildlife tourist attraction, featuring bears. This project goes about as well as such parks usually do – whether it’s inhabited by dinosaurs or any less extinct creatures. To nobody’s surprise – I mean, it’s the film’s title – Mama grizzly escapes, and goes on a brief rampage through town (top). Josh, who had just started working at the facility, is blamed for the unscheduled release.
He takes it on himself to recapture the bear. Quite why this teenage kid, whose knowledge of bears is either off the Internet or acquired in literally one day working under Ranger Frank Bradford (Dryer), thinks he knows better than anyone else is hard to figure out. I’d normally suggest Josh’s father thrash that level of rank idiocy out of him, but (sigh…) of course this being a TV movie, his father is out of the picture, having been shot dead by a bear. Or something. My notes are unclear. This might partly explain his surly, aggressive attitude, though does not condone it. Mama grizzly at least has an excuse, her behaviour being driven by an infected tooth. Josh? Not so much. He’s just a fuckwit.
It’s kinda hard to give a damn about what happens to the lead character in a film, when he is considerably less sympathetic than the creature he’s going up against. If Josh had genuinely been responsible for the escape, I might have cared. Instead, the bear was actually set loose by a lackey of sleazy businessman Harlan Adams (Daniel Baldwin), for reasons also lost somewhere in my notes, but are likely to do with property development. The failure to reach a minimum level of carnage – 1 (1) person and a dog are mauled, off-camera – gets this disqualified from our survey of killer bear movies. Though if I ever do one on irritating teens, this’ll be top of the list.
For in addition to Josh, there’s also Ranger Bradford’s daughter, Terri (Peldon), who is as annoyingly bubbly as Josh is sullen. Naturally, they team up to find the bear, and bond over being one parent short of a full set. Speaking of which, Josh drifted off onto thin ice there, since Rachel wanders off too (I guess stupidity is genetic), and literally falls into the bear’s den. Which is kinda weird since it has only been out for a few hours. Maybe it bought the property on Zillow. This was the point at which the last vestiges of my interest crawled into a hole and died. I think it’s safe to say, I’m over bear movies for the foreseeable future.