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.
