Critic's Grade: F

Looking for ideas for a movie around a theme park isn't exactly the way to go about creating a movie; for further justification of this statement, look no further than Disney's "The Country Bears." Believe me folks: it's that bad, not as bad as its trailer, but worse. At least the trailer only lasts two minutes: this bear of a movie is so endlessly monotonous and lopsided that it begs to be parodied by Mad magazine. If this is the future of Disney's line of live-action family entertainment, then we're in for a long millenium.

The story is so primitive and basic it incites eye-rolling from the get-go. Young Beary Barrington (voiced by Haley Joel Osment) is just trying to find his place in the world (roll), as he begins to realize that he is different than the rest of his family (roll!) because he's a bear (roll!!) and they are human (ROLL!!!). You would think that by simply watching the human actors attempt to keep a straight face in the face of such sloppy material would be interesting all its own, but not even the plastic, cardboard performances qualify as any form of entertainment.

So anyway, Beary runs away to pursue his dream of reuniting the titular music group, made up entirely of bears (what, you were expecting cheetahs?). It's the usual broken-up rock group trying to find themselves again, while Beary learns all about life, love, friendship, and family in the process. God, someone please hand me a noose so I can get it overwith already.

Now, you can sit here all day long and argue with me about target audience and all that bull. I don't think even the youngest of age groups capable of watching a movie like "The Country Bears" would find the slightest entertainment value in it, especially considering we've had much better family fare this year with "Ice Age" and "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron." And let's not forget Disney's other live-action flick this year, "The Rookie," a film that was just as routine and clich?d as this, but for all the right reasons. It wasn't about gimmicks or showing off; it was about simplicity, and found its voice and charm without so much as a stumble.

"The Country Bears," however, is just so completely stupid and inane that you can't help but wish you were somewhere else. It trips over its own concept of bears walking, talking, wearing clothes, communicating with humans, being adopted by them... it just gets annoying, dumb, comes nowhere near capturing the same type of magic seen in the "Stuart Little" films. Sure, the animatronic bears may look realistic, but as characters, they have absolutely no effect on us whatsoever. Nothing in the film does. If you've seen any advertising for it, you know what you're getting; if you expect anything more or less than that, and later have to ask why this is so stupid, you deserve to waste your money.

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