For this week’s Disney Byways column, regular writer Gillianren has graciously allowed Douglas Laman (NerdInTheBasement) to fill in for her. Being a major Disney nerd himself, Doug is extremely grateful for this opportunity and hopes not to muck things up while Gillianren is briefly away!
Hollywood loves to create imitations of what’s successful. This has been true for decades upon decades, so it might strike some as puzzling that Disney has actually done only two movies based on their theme park attractions (The Haunted Mansion and Tomorrowland) ever since those Pirates Of The Caribbean movies took off like a flash. While we sometimes hear rumblings of a Jungle Cruise movie (they’ve been trying to get that made for over a decade now) or Guillermo Del Toro’s Haunted Mansion project, Disney seems to be in no rush to do a bevy of motion pictures based on their universally beloved theme park attractions.
Perhaps that’s because Disney realizes the optimal scenario of turning a theme park ride into a movie results in Pirates Of The Caribbean, while the complete opposite result of that scenario results in…..The Country Bears. A 2002 film adaptation of the beloved stage show at the various Disney theme parks opened a year prior to the world got introduced to Jack Sparrow and was a total box office disaster, grossing only $18 million worldwide on a $35 million budget. Those are some grisly (sorry!) results for what was hoped to be the start of a new family movie franchise for the studio.
Where had they gone wrong? Well, basically everywhere. I remember watching the movie as a kid, and even as a six year old obsessed with everything Disney, my main reaction to it was just “meh”. It’s basically faded away from the public consciousness since then, even avoiding the fate of being turned into a “meme” by ironic/sad millennials like fellow family movies of the era like Space Jam and Shrek have received. Beary Barrington just isn’t worthy of even that kind of treatment. Truth be told, despite being a movie about anthropodermic human-sized bears belting out country tunes, The Country Bears is too dull to even be remembered as a family movie that’s weirder than you remember, it’s just a generic mess.
The film utilizes the exact same plotline The Muppets would utilize nearly a decade later to far greater effect, in that Beary is a bear whose grown up in a human family who feels alone in the world. He ends up running away from home and tries to reunite the various members of the original Country Bear band so they can save Country Bear Hall from an evil banker. That’s it, with none of the bears being particularly funny or memorable. Our hero, Beary, is a complete flat line as a lead while the film lacks anything remotely exciting. They can’t even do good country music numbers. C’mon! At least try to channel some George Jones or Dolly Parton in your tunes!
There’s also the odd fact that the myriad of bears in the film are depicted through human-sized animatronics, which is a noble effort that doesn’t really work since these are some really limp creature costumes the film is working with. Maybe it’s more of the lackluster writing than the subpar animatronics, but it never escapes one mind that you’re just watching some guy in a big bear costume, none of the Country Bears or Beary ever become actual people you can connect with, By contrast, those loveable Muppets immediately make you forget you’re watching some guy operate felt and cloth with one hand due to the talent performers behind those characters and the sharp writing.
If the goal was to add a sprawling mythology to The Country Bears that a new generation could latch onto, well, that didn’t quite work out. Instead, The Country Bears just served to create concern for the then upcoming Pirates Of The Caribbean and also as a narrative precursor to the vastly superior Muppets movie that would come on down the road. The only thing really worth mentioning in this tepid mess is the man playing the evil banker….CHRISTOPHER WALKEN!!! Good o’l Christopher Walken, always thrusting himself 123% into any given role, even if that role is playing an evil banker to a bunch of creepy costumed bears. That scene of him repeatedly smashing a model of Country Bear Hall is the one moment of transcendent brilliance in a movie lacking any semblance of a pulse. If we must get more movies in the future based on Disney Theme Park Rides, please let them feature Christopher Walken in some capacity.