mlraymond Review of Jack the Bear

Jack the Bear (1993)

Very heavy drama mixed with offbeat humor makes for strange film

[5/10 · 29 November 2006]

I have to confess to being baffled by this movie. At times, it seemed a family drama of a father and sons coping with the loss of their wife and mother; then it seemed to be an eccentric comedy with DeVito's character as a well meaning but unreliable dad, and finally it seemed to become a bizarre horror thriller with an evil neighbor . This was the part I simply could not make sense of. I spent most of the latter part of the film trying to determine if Gary Sinise was actually dangerous, or just kind of an oddball, but harmless. It was unclear to me whether he had actually harmed the young boy who he apparently kidnapped, or if he really was intending to kill the other boy at the end. I simply could not get a handle on this character, what motivated him, why he was the way he was; was he mentally ill, a child-hater, a neo-fascist ? What was the significance of the kid wearing a Nazi uniform for Halloween? I kept wondering if the character would turn out to be a comic villain. I just found the character so underwritten that he was completely unfathomable. I never got any real sense of why he was supposed to be so evil, and why any of the neighbors would have tolerated his presence around children if they knew how deranged he was. The film is well acted and quite powerful, but it just doesn't work for me. The psycho neighbor throws the whole regular family drama out of kilter and takes the movie down such a strange path that the movie gets derailed.