todesnudel There are movies that are so bad that they are hilarious to watch. And then there's movies like Bear. They are simply bad, without any hilarity. To quote Roger Ebert here, I think the crew tried to make a wonderful movie, but they failed in doing so. Why did they fail? Because there's not much that fits together. 4 people in a car, two brothers and their girlfriends. From the very first scene we see those 4 they try everything to come across as the most unlikeable characters in the world. They are constantly picking at each other and are acting in the most stupid way possible. It's not even that the actors are particularly bad (they are not good either, they are just average actors), but it's the script that makes this movie almost unwatchable.But let's start at the very beginning. As already stated, there are 2 brothers and their respective girlfriends/wives in a car. They are traveling to the brother's father's birthday dinner, which for some reason is held in the most remote countryside ever ("Cell phone doesn't work" trope, YAY). Of course they decide "to take a shortcut" and of course they have an accident. One of the tires goes flat, so they have to stop. The changing does take some time (starts at bright daylight and ends during the night... however, during the night there seems to be a pretty awesome light source, since we can see everything just fine) and during their forced stop, they are attacked by a bear. Luckily one of the brothers carries a gun, and he fires every bullet he has to kill off the bear. OK, up until this point it could've been an okay movie, but it already starts to go downhill from here. A second bear appears and he mourns the loss of his partner(?) and even has a flashback(!) of how bear #1 was shot. He then goes on to attack the group. They hide inside the car and even get it going (trope of "my car hates me" avoided!), but somehow end up running it into the next tree. The car is flipped over by the bear. After some minutes the bear leaves again. So, what does the script now holds in place for the unfortunate 4? Of course, they are whining over the birthday cake that got all messed up during the attack. I mean, who wouldn't think of the cake (which apparently isn't a lie) in a situation like this? Anyway, they manage to flip the car into a normal position again, but it won't start this time. After some more boring dialogue the bear appears again and somehow (at this point I wasn't paying too much attention anymore) one of the 4 is caught outside and gets killed. Nick (boyfriend of the girl that got killed) is sad at first, but his sadness somehow vanishes after some time. The other two don't care too much about the death either. And now the movie just starts to repeat itself. Nick tells some stories about some native American legends and how the bear takes revenge, the others keep arguing, bear attacks, leaves, Nick tells some stories, they are arguing... it goes on for some time. This is where I think the script writers just weren't sure in what direction the movie should go. Either follow the plot line of Nick's stories about that legend and create some "supernatural bear" movie or leave it out. Cut down on the arguing and let the characters actually DO something productive. After some time Sam (brother of Nick) decides to just run to the steakhouse where the party should've taken place. Why he didn't do so after the first attack isn't really clear. I mean, the car is broken down, the cell phones have no signal and the road is deserted (apart for one car that passes by but obviously doesn't see the flipped over car right in his headlights... oh well). So... what was their plan? Just sitting there and hope the bear would starve to death? But Sams plan doesn't work out. He is dragged back by the bear, but somehow manages to appear on screen without a single scratch on his face. After that the story repeats itself a few times again until both brothers are dead and only the pregnant Liz survives. Hooray!As I've said at the beginning of this review: The script doesn't make much sense. It's as if the script writers didn't knew what to do with the idea of a "killer bear", so they tried to fill it up with unnecessary dialogue that no one cares about anyway. I mean what's the point of all the arguing if at the end, all characters are dead anyway. They sure as hell haven't learned anything from this experience... because they die. Liz hasn't learned anything from this experience, because her husband and the father of her unborn child (yes, Nick had an affair with Liz and got her pregnant). How is she supposed to get on with her life now?So, apart from the average actors, does this movie has something else that isn't completely bad? Yes! The bear is REAL (for most of the time). There's an extra on the BluRay that shows how the bear was trained, which is quite interesting. Oh, and they let the bear tear apart a real car it seems.I rate this 1 out of 10. The script doesn't make sense and the characters are awful (not so much the actors, mind you). You just don't care for them. You just wish the bear would get them sooner, so the movie would end more quickly.

bababear You've probably heard the joke about the starlet who was such a terrible actress that when she somehow landed the lead in a stage production of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK audience members shouted "They're upstairs!" when the Nazi soldiers arrived.That's how I felt watching these twits (one of my favorite terms I've picked up from watching Monty Python) replaying CUJO only without the suspense and scares.Now, my standards aren't picky when I'm watching movies on Chiller or SyFy. Generally, I'm a cheap date. And I had gingerbread cookies from the Mexican bakery and a big glass of iced tea.But the characters were annoying, the situation increasingly ludicrous, and I soon realized that the sooner a character was ripped asunder and eaten by the bear, the sooner that character would stop talking.One character, the younger brother's girlfriend, is eliminated before we can get really irritated with her. But the two brothers and the older brother's wife really were irritating. And their conversation was essentially a ploy to stretch an anecdote out to feature length.Finally the older brother makes a run for it. He gets to the fringes of civilization. While he crosses the parking lot of a bar he sees that the bear has followed him.And he winds up back at the car with his wife and brother because the bear made him come back. This happens offstage, so we have to take his word for it.Let me confess at this point, I used the fast-forward button. A lot. I'm not a paid reviewer, so I can't get fired for this.One of the highlights was when the door of the car swings open and we see the reflection of a huge studio light used during the outdoor shooting in the window.I checked out the crew on IMDb. The first-billed screenwriter is not a native speaker of English. Really? Well, actually, I figured as much. But far more shocking is that the co-author is none other than Ethan Wiley who wrote the horror comedy HOUSE back in 1986. His career went downhill- he did one of the entries in the Children of the Corn franchise and this continues his decline.I am grateful to Chiller, though, for showing this to the very end of the closing credits. It turns out that the wildlife preserve in California where the film was made suffered great damage in a wildfire and there's an effort being made to help restore it to functionality. The bear's performance is certainly more effective than any of the humans' because the bear is not saddled by any dialog. No wonder it looks so happy in the closing credits playing with what's left of the protagonists' car.The closing credits also let us see someone in a uniform wander across the camera's field of vision, and at some point someone takes a flash picture of the bear. Yep. If Martin Scorsese was watching this, he probably was taking notes for his next production. You betcha.

MBunge I laughed out loud many times while watching this movie. Unfortunately, it's not a comedy. No, Bear is a low-budget horror flick gone terribly, hilariously wrong. And it's the best kind of wrong, too. The sort that gets wronger and wronger as it goes along. This film starts out cheap looking but with a faint hint there might be something interesting in the offing. Then it slides into bad and keeps going into awful until about an hour in, it plunges to near Ed Woodian depths of suck. It's the sort of cinema suck where the filmmakers have absolutely no clue how horrible they are and the goofiest bits of addle-brained nonsense are allowed to play out on the screen. If these folks were trying to go for "so bad, it's good", I salute their accomplishment. If they weren't…I pity them.Giving credit where it's due, this is a great concept for a motion picture. Combine Open Water with Jaws, except it's set in the woods with a grizzly bear. Tell me that's not a brilliant bit of inspiration! Of course, whatever screenwriters Roel Reiné and Ethan Wiley did to come up with it must have blown out every synapse in their brains because everything after the concept is staggeringly poor. Well, not everything. Some of the camera work in Bear is, well, not good but it shows a few glimmers of talent. And I suppose the bear does an okay acting job. The rest? Hoo boy.Belittling older brother Sam (Patrick Scott Lewis), his nondescript wife Liz (Mary Alexandra Stiefvater), his family disappointment younger brother Nick (Brendan Michael Coughlin) and Nick's hippie skank girlfriend Christine (Katie Lowes) take a shortcut through the woods on the way to a party for Sam and Nick's parents. A flat tire sends them off the road and a bear wanders by, so Sam goes all Scarface on the bear and shoots it dead, blasting away even as it tries to lumber off. When the bear's angry mate arrives, Sam is out of bullets and the group has to take refuge in their broken down minivan and try to find a way to survive a 400 pound beast who's out for vengeance! So, I guess instead of Jaws this is more like Orca. Yeah, that's right. Orca.I'm not going to go into a lot of the details of where, how and why Bear stinks on ice. This thing really is so mirthfully ghastly that you've got to experience it for yourself. I will say that, while these filmmakers did use a trained grizzly for many scenes, they also extensively employ a guy in a bear suit. It's not a good bear suit, either. Have you ever seen those Bear City vignettes from Saturday Night Live? It's more like that kind of bear suit. There's also a point where the film turns into a episode of the Maury Povich show with the bear playing the part of Maury.I'm not kidding about that.This is one of the most difficult movies I've ever tried to evaluate. Bear is truly atrocious, but in an at times spectacularly entertaining fashion. I didn't enjoy it, but I enjoyed laughing at it. To be fair to other films, the quality here deserves two stars. I must bump it up to three, though, because I had a much better time watching this than any other two star flick I've suffered through.

balrogof_moria Seriously, this movie is just plain retarded. Nothing in it makes any sense, and the "twist" at the end is just ungodly stupid. The characters are extremely stupid and the bear is apparently both super-intelligent and psychic. The car continuously breaks down in typical horror-cliché manner, so they are forced to stay there, and the characters are 100% unlikeable in every way, so when they start dying you feel yourself ultimately cheering for the bear. The bear attack scenes are ridiculous, due in part to the "Bear" often times being a stage-hand in a horrid costume; in fact, in the scene where the characters are hiding in a pipe and are sneaking out, you can CLEARLY see a stage-hand with a crappy bear paw glove on standing next to the pipe waiting for a non-existent cue. This movies ending also sucks as we find out WHY the bear was attacking. When we do......we face-palm at full force. I won't give it away, but it is incredibly stupid, and makes you want to destroy the movie.This movie is an epic fail in every way and shouldn't have EVER seen the light of day.