The Country Bears (2002)
Directed by Peter Hastings
For Beary Barrington, The Country Bears' young #1 fan, fitting in with his all-too-human family is proving im-paws-ible. When he runs away to find Country Bear Hall and his heroes, he discovers the venue that made them famous is near foreclosure. Beary hightails it over the river and through the woods to get the Bears in the Band back together for an all-out reunion concert to save Country Bear Hall.
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What critics compared The Country Bears to
But when it was originally announced, the thought of making a movie based on the popular Disney theme park attraction seemed a dubious idea at best, with previous similar attempts (including 1997's TV movie "Tower of Terror," 2000's "Mission to Mars" and 2002's "The Country Bears") not really inspiring tremendous confidence in future success -- which was proved again in late 2003 with the Eddie Murphy flick "The Haunted Mansion."
Screenwriter Mark Perez’s resume is a mixed bag, too: he wrote the sweet and subversive college comedy Accepted , but also The Country Bears , which is a the sign of the apocalypse.
Written by Mark Perez (Disney’s “The Country Bears”) and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (“Vacation”), “Game Night’s” premise — a brother’s gift of a dangerous adventure that may or may not be real — is eerily similar to director David Fincher’s 1997 thriller, “The Game.”
Game Night’s secret to success is its whip-smart dialogue and breezy, energetic pacing from screenwriter Mark Perez who unsuccessfully tried to reboot the Herbie the Love Bug franchise back in 2005 and brought the Disney World attraction The Country Bears to life in 2002.
"Vacation" directors John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein and a game cast intermittently keep this film aloft, McAdams' nutsy enthusiasm and Plemons' creepy obsessiveness particularly on target, but Mark Perez's ("The Country Bears") labored script creates a drag that ultimately overtakes their efforts.
Game Night is Daley and Goldstein’s second feature, with a script credited to Mark Perez, esteemed author of Herbie Fully Loaded and The Country Bears.
Although the screenplay was written by Perez, whose past credits are hardly reassuring (that is, unless you’re a superfan of The Country Bears, Herbie Fully Loaded, and/or Accepted), Daley and Goldstein’s influence is all over this film.
The first and last of the films that resulted - 2002's The Country Bears and Thanksgiving, 2003's The Haunted Mansion - were precisely what you'd expect, and audiences and critics responded accordingly.