utgard14 A couple of hippies living in Los Angeles who were forced to grow up and get jobs when they had kids, decide they've had enough of the smoggy city and pack up their family to move to the Rocky Mountains. Once there they play with bears and befriend a grizzled old mountain man. That is, when they aren't running for their lives from wolves or a big grizzly named Three Toes.Ah, the Wilderness Family. Despite its laughable premise, it's actually one of the better of the "getting back to nature" genre of family dramas that popped up in the 1960s and 1970s, when the times they were a-changing and people thought by the 1980s the world would be overpopulated with unbreathable air and no natural resources left. Really, there's not much wrong with the idea of living the natural life and getting away from the crowded cities. But these movies were often so irresponsibly naive, treating living off the land like it' s a cake walk and there are just as many Disney-style friendly wild animals as there are ones that will kill you. Oh and they never talk about bugs. As anyone who has ever been camping can attest, bugs are the worst. Nature's PR guy should get a raise for keeping bugs out of the brochures. And I don't want to even get into understanding why these movies all seem to have old men wandering around the mountains being friendly with kids.Like I said, this movie is one of the better examples of this genre. At least here it is shown that you have to work to live in the wild and there are some dangers, unlike the completely unrealistic "My Side of the Mountain," where a kid goes to live in the wilderness and befriends animals and a creepy old guy who plays a flute. That kid had it easy but there is some effort made here to portray the struggle it takes to live in the wild, although this is still far from realistic. The cast here is decent, led by Robert Logan as the stubborn hippie dad and George Buck Flower as the mountain man. Corny hippie soundtrack oddly works. As always with these types of films, the best part is the scenery. No sets or cheap CGI fakery going on, just real grass, trees, rivers, mountains, and animals. It adds an authenticity to things missing today. Plus, who doesn't love a good view? This was followed by two sequels that are pretty much more of the same.

georgiasmum0 This is a feel-good, family movie of the television era of Little House on the Prairie. We watched a lot of crap back then and enjoyed it immensely. If you have no preconceived ideas of being thrilled and scared, and understand that this is a movie pushing why so many of us 'up and left' society and joined communes and built squat toilets escaping from the 'burbs'. My 11 year old thoroughly enjoyed it, though she too could see through it (and also see the microphone in heaps of scenes - delightful). We will now watch the second one and be just as delighted, entertained and taken back to a simpler time. Not just in the movie, but remembering the seventies in general.

spheckma This series of movies may have been sentimental and old fashioned in its attempt to make the far north version of Swiss Family Robinson. The acting if good and the stories, although fought with danger are realistic to life in the north country. If we are to goo through life only living for and watching movies made to please many of those who prefer the world through a cynics eye then we are doomed to miss a lot. Watching a skunk lapping the frosting off a much converted cake and the raven stealing the clothes pin may be far fetched, but possible. The scenery is beyond beautiful and even though the first girl who played the daughter is replaced in the second and third movies, the replacement is a delight to watch.

rikforgo The kids will enjoy this enough, but parents beware! This will be a difficult two hours. The cinematography is passable, it's just the dialog and the acting that make this movie tough to tolerate. The family -- the father, really -- grows tired of the big city, so he decides to lug his family into some beyond-isolated mountain valley. How the actual decision to leave is made is just annoyingly laughable.The credits base the story on actual events, but given the range of things they throw at you, you wonder just how much artistic license the film takes. How many times can you be attacked by a bear and not figure out something is wrong? If you are watching the movie via VCR, DVR or DVD, slow-mo on the window during the bear-attacks-the-cabin scene and you'll see a man in a really bad bear costume.The film meanders from plot twist to plot twist without any real direction and by the time you've made it through the fourth or the fifth twist, you begin to hope it ends soon. But it doesn't.I remember seeing this movie on TV when I was a kid, and I am sorry I saw it again. You just don't watch a movie with a critical eye when you're 7. Unfortunately it didn't live up to the memories.