Dwah?  Another one so soon?

Believe it or not, this is the last tape in my pile… because every other tape left in my queue has a block preventing my tuner from capturing it.  Except maybe Robo Formers.  That one’s just plain old.  Oh wait, there’s still Captain America II.  I guess there’s that.

From what I could gather, this was actually a made-for-TV movie.  I wonder what network would be stupid enough to actually order this.  I’m literally at a loss for who the target audience for this movie is.

The movie starts out with a typical family camping out and singing “Row Row Row Your Boat” in rounds, because that’s what white people do.  They legitimately enjoy singing that song ad nauseum.  However, the dad notices something’s up and tells everyone to get into car for no particular reason… because that’s what you do when you don’t want your family to panic.  You tell them to do something out of the blue and provide them no reasoning.

Suddenly, PICANICBASKETSMOTHERFUCKERS!

A big ol’ bear shows up and attacks for no particular reason other than it’s a bear.  However, the family is saved thanks to Native American Indiana Jones.

N-no, seriously.

NAIJ tranqs the bear, and we move on to the least interesting part of the movie: the rest of it.

In typical “moving to a new town” fashion, we have a single mother excitedly driving her mopey only son to the small town of Pine Lake.  While driving, she blatantly exposition-dumps to a supposed friend over her cell phone.  I say “supposed” because she’s explaining her entire motivation for moving as if she’s telling it for the first time, despite prefacing the conversation with “I already told you…”  Meanwhile her son has to tell her to watch out because she almost ran into someone on the road because she’s talking on a cell phone while driving in 1999, which makes her the biggest monster of all.

Basically, she’s a former advertising big-wig who got burned out and decided to move into the boonies to run an antique shop.  Meanwhile, at a town meeting the townies are in an uproar over the decision to keep a bear locked up in their town.  Not out of some animal rights activism, no… it’s because bears are killers!

In an effort to calm their tits, blatantly-evil Daniel Baldwin (it doesn’t matter what his name is; I will call him Daniel Baldwin) gives a half-assed speech about town pride, and the mob just kinda files out of the hall.

By the way, that is in fact John O’Hurley as the mayor.  Hilariously, Daniel Baldwin doesn’t even wait for the townfolk to completely depart before exposition-dumping in hush tones about their plan to get obscenely rich once the bears are dead.  Which has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

The two plot threads come together when Awful Mom arrives in town at around the same time as the bears and meets with Ranger Bradford, who creepily takes an immediate interest in Awful Mom and looks entirely too much like Jack Nicholson.  I suspect they wanted Jack Nicholson, couldn’t afford him, and got someone to look just like him.

And who else would show up but the plucky useless girl / would-be romantic lead if the main character weren’t (I suspect) gay.  And that’s not an insult.  I legit think there’s just enough subtext to come to that conclusion logically.

Annoying girl immediately latches onto Josh (yes, his name is “Josh”) and wants to get the “scoop” or an “exclusive” or whatever stupid fake young journalists want while being annoying as fuck.  I’m going to stop caring about this girl right now and move on.

Josh hates being in this hick town and pretty much acts out in a way even more juvenile than Daniel in Karate Kid.  Except he didn’t even take an interest in a girl or get beat up by bullies.  He’s just a spoiled piece of crap with a dumb-as-fuck mother.  He bikes up to the “Pine Lake” sign and throws rocks at it, somehow accidentally shattering Ranger Notnicholson’s windshield, because they’re fragile like that.

It’ll cost $700 to replace that, and Josh doesn’t have that kind of money.  “Please don’t tell my mom, I’ll do ANYTHING.”  Rather than take this opportunity to go to some dark places, Ranger Notnicholson decides to offer him a job.  Seriously, this is getting to be more and more like Karate Kid, except instead of karate, there’s bears.

Josh is the ranger’s assistant in taking care of the bears for $6 an hour after school.  Unfortunately, the job hours keep him away from home until late, and Awful Mom throws a fit about how she needs him here to help set up the antique store.  Oh, and the bit about letting her know where he is, which actually makes sense for a change.

One night however, Daniel Baldwin and some lackey (who the viewers might recognize is one of the bear protesters) make preparations to free the bear so it can go on a rampage, so they can kill the bear.  Josh gets intercepted by them while biking back to pick up his Walkman… Yeah, I just said that.

After some light threatening, Baldwin lets Josh go, and his lackey continues his plan.  Almost immediately, a security guard gets offscreen massacred.

A task force gets formed to track and bring back the rampaging grizzly bear while protesters continue to hassle the mayor about bringing the bear to Pine Lake.  Much to Daniel Baldwin’s chagrin, an outside hunter is brought in to handle the bear: Jack Buck.  I shit you not, his name is Jack Buck.

By the way, I should mention at some point Josh looked up stuff on the internet and found out that the bear was acting as if it had some kind of gum infection, and despite the ranger knowing all about bears and having a large number of the medicine needed specifically to treat the infection, Josh thinks he knows better because kids are smarter than expert adults.  Oh, and some backstory about him being some kind of activist or somesuch.  Probably a phase.  Or that’s what all the young people were doing in the 90s.

Meanwhile, bear doing bear things.

Josh decides to track down the bear and try to help it since he doesn’t want it to get put down.  Meanwhile, the annoying chick (who BTW is the daughter of Ranger Notnicholson) shows up out of nowhere JUST IN TIME to try to tag along with Josh.  Josh refuses and goes off on his own.

Josh goes rock climbing TO ELECTRIC GUITAR BECAUSE THE YOUNG FOLK LIKE ACTION AND GUITARS even though there’s really nothing to suggest he absolutely needed to climb up some rock walls.  Then from behind he gets attacked by…

Okay, so Josh thought it necessary to rock climb to track down this bear, and he gets fucking ninja’d by annoying chick with a camera, carrying a fake bear paw and an audio clip of a growling bear JUST to fuck with him.  Seriously, she can go die in a fire.  Josh tells her to go back, but she basically implies if she doesn’t tag along, she’ll make a call to his mother and tell her where he is.  I don’t know what’s worse, that she’s so pushy and selfish, or that she doesn’t think the right thing to do is let Josh’s mom know where he is.

Meanwhile, another bear victim gets taken to the camp.  In a dick move I completely approve, the ranger looks under the tarp and pulls out a bloody cap that belongs to Josh, then hands it to Josh’s mom.  He does this BEFORE saying that the bloodied corpse is a dog.

It’s quite possibly the best scene in the entire movie.

Meanwhile, Baldwin and Lackey are trying to kill the bear before it can get tranq’d.

Josh and whatsherbitch take shelter in the old abandoned mine (because there’s always an old abandoned mine) and talk about Josh’s dead father who was some hero cop that died while rescuing some people.  Josh’s dad has been a constant source of angst for no real fucking reason, and for some reason, even today, filmmakers think we give a shit about resolving parental angst when it has fucking nothing to do with the main story.  Need I remind you I came here for killer grizzlies and you’ve delivered nothing but Karate Willy?

The two take this time to call their parents and let them know they’re okay.  After letting them know they’re in the old abandoned mine…

Oh good.

Forget what I said before; in quite possibly THE GREATEST SCENE EVER, their parents listen over speakerphone while the bear attacks, and they can only listen as the children scream in terror.  They drop the cell phone while running away and the bear gets right up to the cell phone, breathes heavily and roars before swatting it away.  BEST. SCENE. EVER.

Anyway, the kids get rescued by… well, guess.

Luke Skywalker, Texas Ranger.  So, the kids are okay, but Awful Mom is gone.  Because she’s off to take the law into her own hands and rescue the girls herself, because fuck the ranger.  What does he know?

Look at that.  THOSE ARE HEADLIGHTS.  How can she rescue anyone when she’s a constant danger to both herself and everyone on the road?

Anyway, she makes it to the mine, gets a call on her cell phone letting her know the kids are okay, and she starts heading back but falls through a hole in the ground and gets trapped in the abandoned mine.  Good for her.

So much unnecessary back and forth between the camp and the mine.

Meanwhile, bear.

The bear just fucking pops up at the ranger station without anyone noticing it, then runs off.

Anyway, Jack Buck realizes that the old mine could be an ideal place for the bear to hibernate and concludes the bear must be using it as a cave.  In order to settle this once and for all, he decides to take the bear’s cubs to lure it away so he can tranq it.

The kids are told to stay back, but because they’re kids, they think they know better and do that stupid thing where they hide in the back of a truck, but peek out for no reason other than to let the audience know that they hid in the back of a truck.

By the way, the scene where they’re hiding in the back of the truck is possibly the only good scene in the entire flick involving the annoying chick, because of a great view of her cleavage.  Also swaying.  Swaying is involved.

Meanwhile, Baldwin and lackey are at the mine setting up sticks of dynamite to finish off the bear.  However, the lackey finds Awful Mom and lets Baldwin know about it before running off to cut the fuses.  As Baldwin confirms that there’s a woman trapped in there, he smiles at her and says “I have an idea.”

YOU GUESSED IT!  He’s going to pretend he didn’t know!  Lackey decides he has a conscience and fights Baldwin, but Baldwin beats his lowly little ass handily.  Meanwhile, the ranger, Jack Buck, and the kids show up in time to-

As it turns out, the multiple sticks of dynamite do negligible damage to the mine.  Everyone shows up to help the mom, the bear gets cornered, Jack Buck aims his trusty tranq rifle, and-

Baldwin decides to go all-in and knock out Jack Buck, and- Y’know what?  Let’s go back about half an hour.  Baldwin and Jack know each other from a previous hunting experience that Jack regrets.  He was hired to lead Baldwin to a cougar, and Baldwin killed it.  IT WAS THE LAST OF ITS KIND.  That’s just how cartoonishly villainous this guy is.

Anyway, the bear cubs kind of scratch at Baldwin’s leg, distracting him.  Bear is all threatening, but Baldwin doesn’t die.  He and his lackey get arrested, along with Mayor O’Hurley.  Ranger tells Josh that Josh was right about the gum infection, but the bear will still need to be put down.

So, the kids decide to free the bear into federal land so it can’t be touched because of technical bullshit.  The end.

So…

Yeah, this movie sucked.  Just for kicks, here’s the trailer for the movie to prove that some of the dumber shit I described really fucking happened and are just as bad or worse than I said.  Also, surprised at how a majority of the screenshots I took are actually present in that trailer.

 

Like I said, hands down best reason to watch it is for the cell phone scene.

Ah, I went ahead and uploaded it anyway.

I kind of want to make a Taken edit near the end of that clip.