Baddie – Stupid teenagers.

Lesson – Nature will f*** you up.

“Grizzly Rage”. Oh…oh “Grizzly Rage”. What can I say. Well, I got all ambitious this week and watched a movie that didn’t involve scales. And I have to say, it was quite the foray into the furry.

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…That sounded better in my head. 

Let’s start with the bad. “Grizzly Rage” laughs in the face of your ‘long shots’. It laughs maniacally, pushes them into the dirt, verbally abuses them with over-used Monty Python references and laughs some more. Seriously, this whole film could be about a third the length. There are so many sequences that are completely pointless. Most movies start with the typical ‘bonding’ montage, showing that the characters are totally like, best friends! This movie is no exception. It includes several montages of driving, speeding, running, walking, more running, more walking. It’s ridiculous. I think they were trying to build tension, or something. It really just serves to cause drowsiness.

Secondly, the bear is stupid. They seem to have a real bear on set, which is cool. However, there are some limits to what you can do with a real bear. Those limits are pretty much “watch it shamble” and “watch it roar”. The end. So they rigged up some prosthetic arms. It’s not obvious at all. /cough This also limits the action, and the blood, and the attacks, and pretty much anything that would make this film interesting.

Thirdly, you root for the bear the second the actors breach the screen the first time. Seriously, try not to hate the guy in the bucket hat and Hawaiian shirt. I dare you. (I bear you? Sorry.) I lovingly nicknamed the four of them. Douchebag #1 (Rich), Douchebag #2 (Sean), Existential One (Wes) and Obligatory Breasts (Laura). If you don’t hate them instantly for whatever reason, don’t worry. They’re about to kill a baby bear with their douchebag-mobile.  That’s not a spoiler, that’s how they piss off Mama Bear.

Incidentally, they suck at plans. There is brief discussion that indicates that they know how to handle themselves around bears. Of course, this knowledge floats out the window as soon as there’s actually a bear. There are plans that involve running a lot. There’s a lot of set up for plans that don’t even come close to working. It’s like a pathetic episode of Scooby Doo, where instead of laughing at Shaggy’s hijinks, you just feel sad that it didn’t work out.

Now, this is not strictly a SciFi film. It’s a regular old bear. Unless you count the two references to Toxic Waste in the water. Then it might not be. They don’t really address that though, so I’m going to ignore it. There’s also a redneck cabin full of traps and bones and weird stuff. Ignore that too, because it really has no reason to be in this movie other than to provide an interesting injury later on (Hint: It’s not really caused by the bear).

RHI Entertainment
No cell service here, dude.

To summarize – this is a needlessly long film in which not a ton happens to people who totally deserve it. The ending is anti-climatic, but probably the funniest part, so it’s worth the struggle until the end should you embark on this journey.

Oh, and it’s Canadian.