The Bears and I

I haven't seen "The Bears and I" in many, many years. Shame on me. Wow, this movie really hit the spot. The story, acting and animals are all great. The standout of this movie is the location photography. It's truly beautiful. I remember I had the book when I was a kid. I wish I could read it now. "The Bears and I" is that good.

"A man seeking peace and quiet finds himself father to three bears."

Well, with that synopsis, I was instantly sold. This was a simple, easy to watch Disney live action film from the 1970s. I didn't even know John Wayne had a son, but Patrick Wayne is the lead here - oddly reminding me more of Charlton Heston than the Duke.

The acting is incredibly wooden, and often awkward. Thankfully (and somewhat amusingly), Wayne has better chemistry with the bears and wilderness than he does his human co-stars.

"The Bears and I" isn't the type of film you watch for technical aspects. You won't find any Oscar awards here. Instead, you'll experience some of the most breathtaking scenery put to film. The British Columbia landscapes and wilderness are the real stars of the film here - besides the bears of course!

Scratch, Patch and Rusty were fantastic. You can't help but watch with a smile at times - even though it's often super cheesy. The Native American angle also added an interesting element to the story. Reminded me a tiny bit of a Disney-esque "Jeremiah Johnson". The John Denver song suited it perfectly.

9 years old when it came out. Haven't forgotten about it. Obviously it made an impression. Thinking the bears were named Patch scratch and itch. Been 45 years. I may have a name wrong.. Cant find their names on line...

Patrick Wayne heads out to an Indian settlement to speak to Chief Dan George; Wayne had been a buddy of the Chief's son, killed in Vietnam. Wayne wants time to think about his life, so he holes up in a cabin. There he succors three orphaned bear cubs and gets in the middle of a squabble between the US Parks Department and the Indians. The Parks Department wants the land for a national park, and the Indians look on it as their home.

It's a good movie in terms of story and camerawork. The area around Chiko Lake in British Columbia, standing in for US wilderness, is beautiful, and the performers -- including the three bears -- are good-looking and move well. Where the film falls down is in the dialogue direction. Wayne drones, and the voice-over he performs, written by Jack Speirs, is annoyingly cute. The story movies which voice-over narration improves are very rare. Usually they are a kludge to fix a problem that should not exist. In this one, with its year-long story, the narration helps tighten the movie. Even so, there's too much of it and poorly performed.

The idea of watching everything on Disney Plus has exposed me to a fair bit of rubbish. In particular, a lot of pretty terrible live action films that were churned out in the 1970's. It was with some trepidation then that I approached "The Bears and I" which it appeared might manage to be the magic double header of both animal abuse and stereotypical portrayals, but in actuality was entertaining enough to keep my attention.

Bob Leslie (Patrick Wayne) returns the possessions of his late army buddy to his Native American father Chief Peter A-Tas-Ka-Nay (Chief Dan George). Leslie decides to stay in the area for a while and starts to work on a cabin near a lake. When hunters kill the mother of three young bear cubs, he decides that he can't just leave them to fend for themselves, so begins to feed and care for them. This action puts him at odds with the tribe, who believe bears to be sacred and better dead than subservient to man. The tribe also has the problem that the Parks department want to convert the land to a national park, and they think that Leslie could be a good go-between.

This is one of the films where the producers (I assume) chose to use trained bears, rather than attempting to cobble a story around naturally shot footage. So, Patrick Wayne (son of John) gets to interact with the bears on a closeup basis. That interaction really makes up the bookends of the film - with the fight for the Native American land - sitting in the middle. There's the odd moment when I wasn't 100% on the cubs safety. Particularly in a scene involving an upturned canoe. I quite liked Wayne here, he narrates the story as well as playing the lead and he makes Leslie just the right side of likeable rather than naive idiot. (Though occasionally it's pretty close)

The middle of the film focuses on the land issue which has a few moments that don't ring true. The demolition of the houses before the relocation has been completed, for one and the fact that things don't escalate wildly when the films villain, played by Michael Ansara starts taking potshots at the building crew.

Look, I don't think this is some lost gem (with do apologies to my reviewing colleagues that did) but it's generally watchable and has some lovely landscapes to look at. Plenty of films on Disney Plus don't manage that.