CURRENT ISSUE 7/30/02 Front Page Weekly Features Advice from Strangers Ain't That America? To-Do List: James Traficant Moth's Diary News from Travistan Movie Corner Globetrotting with Push Info Archives Crap Shop About The Probe Contact Us! Aye, mateys! Get you some Daily Probe booty!	Daily Probe Movie Review by Preston Fillagre Chair, Cinema Studies Department Rhode Island State University   The Country Bears Hastings and company are to be congratulated for this homage to the foundling archetype, but we are burdened in the telling with too unwieldy a set of premises. Beary is raised as a human by a family of humans, and here the film shines. We immediately see his alienated condition as clearly as Gregor Samsa sees his: Dislocation of identity communicated via the plane of the palpable. One can even relish a sly commentary on unwelcome financial downturns within the affluent compass of bonhomie represented by the ursine symbolism. But in Act II we are braced with Pinterian opacity. Why should Beary's true family appear as has-been musicians? This was a Gordian knot proof for any budding cinematic Alexander, and I felt cast on the shoals of incomprehensibility by its intrusion, bereft of even one leitmotif to which I could cling. Alas, the film proved to be mere bear-baiting.
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