Wild Grizzly

This movie proves that these days they are making a goodly percentage of movies for TV that are better than what you see in the theater. After gasping in dismay at The Golden Bowl, A Knight's Tale, and The Tailor from Panama in the theaters, I rented this movie at Blockbuster and it was an entertaining 2 hours. My God; a story told clearly and in a consistent way!!!!

The movie is stolen by actor Riley Smith, a teenage kid who has lost his father to urban violence and is forced to move away from the big city to a more rural area with his mother. Smith is really believable and touching in the role; an actor who is leagues better than the majority of Hollywood teen heart throbs. He makes you feel his pain and his desire in this movie. One wonders why he is not in more mainstream pictures. He is surrounded by a good cast; a good script, and very straight forward direction.

Recommended for a worthwhile rental.

A wonderful throw-back to a time when parking was free, people were polite, sex was for adults and life had no hidden meanings. Almost Disneyesque in execution, you could be forgiven for thinking - looking at the DVD cover - that this was just another JAWS, CLAWS or PAWS, with some monstrous mutation of a creature wreaking havoc on helpless visitors to its habitat.

It's anything but - more an environmentally responsible statement for a world these days, dominated by rudeness, dysfunctional families, drugs and mindless violence.

Riley Smith as sixteen year old Josh Harding totally steals the film as the citified youngster struggling to come to terms with the death of his father - a policeman killed in the line of duty. I've seen worse acting from Academy award nominees. Introduced to small town USA, he finds the transition oppressive - until he learns about Grizzlies from the local police chief. His daughter Terri (played by initially annoying-but-effusive Courtney Peldon) strikes up a relationship (and does she ever have to work hard here!) with the lad as they become reluctant hunters and the hunted of the Grizzly in question.

Daniel Baldwin - probably the only "name" in the cast is barely on-screen, and he plays to the hilt, the black-hearted opportunist who ultimately reaps of course, what he sows.

A film with no frothy and unnecessary foul language, no gratuitous violence and even some beautiful bear cubs. I found it eminently watchable and charming in its very innocence.

If every film ever made had maintained even this standard, the world would be a far better place to live. No one ever needed Rambo!

Another one of those movies that captures the scenario of "Man-eating-wild-animal-attacks-people-as-they-struggle-to-survive". In this case, the film's creature is, as the title tells us, a wild Grizzly bear. Most of the actors are unknown and the biggest name in the entire film is probably Daniel Baldwin who doesn't even have that big of a part. A TV film that only managed to get a PG rating out on video, it is probably the kind of movie that many genre fans would stay away from because of the fear that they may be heavily disappointed. While the PG rating is family friendly, the situation is not. The Grizzly actually looks pretty ferocious, and there are maybe two scenes which contain an enormous amount of spilled blood.

WILD GRIZZLY is the kind of small town movie that manages to capture some enduring moments, but not enough to keep you enthralled.Overall, the film is exciting and appealing, but only to a point as it was a TV movie. A film to see once, maybe twice and then after about a decade, when you have forgotten about it entirely, to see it again. WILD GRIZZLY gets 3/5.

I'll usually just flip right by a movie when I see that it's "Made-For-TV". But this one kept my interest from start to finish. I had to see how the star (the grizzly bear) was going to end up. Everyone and everything was against her, except for the new boy in town, Josh (Riley Smith). He got the chance to help her through a job with the park rangers and within 30 seconds (and the internet) he figured out why the bear was so mean and set out to help her. The really unbelievable part of this movie was the interaction between Josh and a local girl, Terry (Courtney Peldon). She was sweet, charming and polite, but poor Josh took all his anger, about having to move to a strange town and the recent death of his father, out on her every time she came near him. The amount of abuse he laid on her, and the fact that she kept coming back for more was just plain too much to make that part of the movie anywhere near believable. I guess the writer, director, or someone in charge of the script hasn't got a clue about how real teenagers interact. That person needs to get out of the singles bars where rejection is a way of life and volunteer with the boy scouts, be a big brother or something to get back in touch with teenagers.

A typical teenagers movie : the poor hero, who lost his heroic father, overprotected by his mother, in an unknown country town, tries to save a wild and ferocious grizzly that suffer from its teeth. The stereotyped villains, very classical of course, want to kill the mama-bear for the insurance premium, because of a commercial center. If you can accept the psychological implausible details, the suspense and the actors are at the top. Special mention for Michele Greene as the hysterical mother and Fred Dryer as the competent, cool and helpful ranger. but the two teen-actors should really find leading parts in the future. Very useful to learn that grizzlies are not teddy bears.