La Liberté sauvage

The kids will enjoy this enough, but parents beware! This will be a difficult two hours. The cinematography is passable, it's just the dialog and the acting that make this movie tough to tolerate. The family -- the father, really -- grows tired of the big city, so he decides to lug his family into some beyond-isolated mountain valley. How the actual decision to leave is made is just annoyingly laughable.

The credits base the story on actual events, but given the range of things they throw at you, you wonder just how much artistic license the film takes. How many times can you be attacked by a bear and not figure out something is wrong? If you are watching the movie via VCR, DVR or DVD, slow-mo on the window during the bear-attacks-the-cabin scene and you'll see a man in a really bad bear costume.

The film meanders from plot twist to plot twist without any real direction and by the time you've made it through the fourth or the fifth twist, you begin to hope it ends soon. But it doesn't.

I remember seeing this movie on TV when I was a kid, and I am sorry I saw it again. You just don't watch a movie with a critical eye when you're 7. Unfortunately it didn't live up to the memories.

So many bad reviews! Why? I loved this as a kid-OK so maybe now it's not my favorite but being that this movie stayed with me as a kid and helped fuel my interest in movies I'd say there was plenty of good to this.

What I liked best about it was the adventure. In these times, a movie like this would never be made at all, or at least not without computer generated monsters chasing the family and lots of car chases. The best thing about this movie is it's earthiness and tranquility. The feeling of being in the middle of nowhere-I can appreciate all types of environments but there is something so beautiful about being in the country when it's perfectly still with just yourself and the environment. In this movie that feeling is created beautifully, it touches the nature and quiet, country feeling. The scenery and country feeling created is beautiful.

It is also not boring at all as this family struggles to make it out in the middle of nowhere.Lots of wildlife and lots of Action packed adventure.Lots of adversities to overcome. And as mentioned, the cinematography is great-you'll feel like your out there in the wilderness too!

I'm not saying this is the best movie in the world-but for those who can appreciate a story revolving around a family and their struggles out in the wilderness it's great. I was enamored as a kid. I wanted to be out there with them! I think this is a good movie and would give it at least an 8. Of coarse it wont appeal to everyone but shouldn't be forgotten either.

I saw this movie as a kid and loved it. Today, I saw it again with my wife and two kids and loved it.

There are aspects that are completely unrealistic (i.e. a welder knows how to build a very nice log cabin, a fast grizzly does not run down the little girl who happens to be ten feet away, the man is not seriously mangled by the mountain lion, the dog is not killed by the wolves, etc.), but what I loved about it was the fact that the family does what so many families long to do--get out of Dodge and head for the high country.

People weren't meant to be stuck in a box 24/7 because they are enslaved to a house payment, the monster SUV, and all the other trappings of civilization. Families were meant to hang together and kids were meant to learn from parents--not MTV, the druggies on the corner, or their friends at school. Parents, to your children love is spelled TIME. This film reinforces that notion and illustrates that this misguided idea of quality time being more important than quantity is ridiculous. The pragmatic message from this film is for parents to sell the BMW and buy a Chevy, sell the mansion on the hill and buy the house in the valley, chuck the ladder-climbing job and take the one that allows you to be home for dinner every night. After all, nobody every regretted not spending more time at work, but they did regret not spending more time with the kiddos.

I believe that it's a movie that was ahead of its time and I'd love to see a more modern (and more realistic) take on the subject. Besides, it's a good family film, which is a rarity these days. It's not a perfect film by any standard, but the scenery is beautiful and the plot is visionary. That's why I give it an 8 out of 10.

This is a good concept of a film, but unfortunately the execution falls flat.

Los Angeles family moves abruptly, not because of crime or overpopulation, but SMOG. (that smog will get you every time). They blindly move into an isolated section of the wilderness 25 minutes away from the nearest people. The parents apparently didn't do their homework because their house is a rundown one-room shack that makes Charles Ingalls' house look like a mansion in comparison. But wouldn't you just know, the father is a man-of-all-trades (just like Ingalls), so he's able to build a new house.

The entire rest of the film is filled with lots of shouting. And YELLING. And SCREAMING. And ARGUING. And SHRIEKING. Did I mention the shouting, because there is a lot of it. You really think these people would tone it down now that they are just by themselves and would seemingly value their peace and quiet, but I suppose not. Oh, and wild animals. Lots of befriending wild animals and running from wild animals. If you like shouting or wild animals, this is the flick for you.

Obviously, there's no large cast with this film. The father does lots of YELLING. The mother is acceptable, if not bland. The daughter alternates between being in a seeming euphoria and positively SHRIEKING at the top of her lungs when she is in danger. The boy is young and has vast difficulty carrying his end of the load.

Despite all of this, the movie does have a few redeeming qualities. The scenery provides for some spectacular shots. The movie also does a good job of portraying animals as living things and explaining the value of befriending them or respecting their territory. The father does kill a moose, but explains to his son they had to because they needed to eat and not because the dad wanted to mount its head on the wall.

I saw this film from what my father told me about it; I like watching cheese, and from what he'd said, this is CHEESE. As people started moving into the mid-1970s, they were leaving behind the hippie-dippy daze, getting into more sophisticated drugs, then becoming clean corporate slaves. Everyone began forgetting how wonderful the earth was because they were too busy drilling it for oil or tearing down trees to make room for our growing population. This film's answer?? Make a senseless decision involving your entire family by moving into a wooded area you know NOTHING about where there's no help for miles and you have no skills dealing with wild animals, baking from ABSOLUTE scratch, hunting, etc. We went from the streets of L.A. to the hills of the Rockies in less than two minutes. Were there books taken out of the library on survival techniques in the wilderness? Did the family take shooting lessons? Was there any talk on food, such as how are we going to grow a garden or bake bread or fish or hunt? If there was, we weren't allowed to see it. We are supposed to believe that this family knew all this, that they had a thriving garden in the city, that the woman could bake bread without so much as a wooden spoon, and that the father had been shooting at the neighbor's cat regularly. The only reason the mother and father had had kids is for the cute factor alone, though it fails miserably at the feigned feel of it all. The little boy sounds like he's reading lines but can't read yet, and the daughter seems drugged into a dazed happiness about everything. Their dog Crust (is that honestly his name?? Crust???) must have attacked wild animals at home as well, seeing as he attacks EVERYTHING in this film; it's surprising he doesn't mutilate flowers if they move too much in the wind, becoming a threat to the family. Here are some things that make me refuse to have suspension of belief: ~The father fly-fishes. He is NOT going to feed a family of 4 on fly fishing. That's called sport, not necessity. ~The dog survives brutal attacks of wolves, bears, and MOUNTAIN LIONS. Something is wrong when a domestic dog from the city makes it out alive in those circumstances with barely a scratch. ~How much does a contruction worker make? Enough to ensure a plane to bring supplies every so often? How about when he has no more job and makes no more money? ~A 10 to 13 year old girl would never outrun a bear. ~Just from my own opinion, I would have lost all faith in myself, my family, and my dog to be able to survive in this place with the attitude and lack of planning that this family accomplished.

Reviews of the plot aside, I'm thinking of starting a drinking game. It's called "Take a shot everytime you see the boom mike."