When Disney goes bad. If Disney didn't produce this, it should have. It was doing all those Shaggy Dog and Herbie movies at that time. This is just before Eddie Albert went over to the dark side and took the money for horrible TV spots like 'Green Acres'. He had done some quite good character acting in the past. Jane Wyatt is fresh from her long running papp with Robert Young 'Father Knows'. Brenda Lee pretends to be the butch Southern daughter. The kids are Disney kid regulars. Watch it if you're sick and want mindless TV on background. It's pretty sugary stuff. If you still believe in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and leprachauns, enjoy.

Grammar school principal and father to three kids--none of whom look or sound alike--has to accept the fact that magic can happen when his two youngest boys change themselves into bears via an incantation borrowed from a trailer-park gypsy. Aside from the typical stereotyping of a nervous, hypocritical psychiatrist, there's nothing offensive about "The Two Little Bears"...indeed, it's as blithely innocuous and harmless as a sitcom from the early 1960s. Littered with famous faces and a familiar suburban scenario, the movie incorporates fanciful comedy and a little song into its mix; still, even trained bear cubs can only do so much, and the picture feels extremely thin at 83 minutes. Eddie Albert and Jane Wyatt are charming as the non-hysterical, low-keyed parents; Brenda Lee is their twangy-voiced teenage daughter (perhaps adopted?); and Donnie Carter and Butch Patrick are the boys (neither of whom are perceptive child-actors, though they are cute as a button). Lee sings (very well) and acts (not so well). Had Walt Disney made this movie, the teasing from critics never would have stopped. Since Twentieth Century-Fox made it--on a TV budget with TV actors--nobody paid any attention. ** from ****

TWO LITTLE BEARS (1962) bw-82m (20th Century Fox) Shown on Fox Movie Channel, c.04/03. After they unearthed the long lost JOHN AGAR film HAND OF DEATH (1961), this was probably next on my Fox most wanted list. BEARS has a super, widescreen Scope intro, but P&S for the rest. (But OK.) The Brenda Lee opening with lots of bears on set is surreal. BEARS starts off like a 50s sitcom. Eddie Albert (3 years B4 GREEN ACRES) is the dad and also the school principal. Mom (Jane Wyatt) seems to have wandered in off the set of FATHER KNOWS BEST. The plot mentions Winnie The Pooh. Brenda Lee uses her own, southern accent, but this is not explained. 3rd billed Soupy Sales has little more than a walk on as the town cop. Butch Patrick and his brother want to be real bears and have costumes that they fantasize in. This has their teacher upset. (Nancy Culp- soon to be Miss Hathaway on THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES.) The boys put on their bear costumes and go to see the fake gypsies on the edge of town. They tell the boys they need a special salve to make them bears, but they are out of it right now. There is a brief, creepy Halloween night scene. Enter a grown up Jimmy Boyd ("I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus") as Lee's date. Now it's a musical as they sing teen love songs to each other. Boyd gives Lee a special present of a big jar of homemade freckle removing cream. (Though it's Boyd who has the most freckles!) The boys discover this and decide is the "magic bear salve". Amazingly, it works (!) or we'd have no movie. The boys turn into what looks like footage from a Castle 8mm Films home travelogue movie about bears. Bears scamper around with overdubbed voices. They invade a golfers lodge in the country, go down the chimney and eat stuff from the cupboard. Then they meet a Mama Bear (That I'm pretty certain is voiced by June Foray), that sort of adopts them. At one point she starts to tell a tale of "Goldilocks and the Three Humans" but there is an abrupt cut to the next scene. Was something cut out? It still runs longer than the time listed in TVM. "Pickle Relish" is used as a euphemism for cussing. No earth shaker, but worth seeing once. Side note: Butch Patrick (recently on E! Celebrity Date, c. 2003) makes his 3rd appearance here. First Butch Patrick was HAND OF DEATH, then PRESSURE POINT- Uncredited, as "Imaginary Playmate. Then, after BEARS, was in A CHILD IS WAITING w. Judy Garland- directed by John Cassavetes and with Billy Mumy! All in 1962.- from Mark Hill

The cast is about the only interesting thing in this unremarkable story of two boys that use magic and wishing to become bear cubs. Eddie (Green Acres) Albert, Jane (Father Knows Best) Wyatt, and Brenda (the singer) Lee perform their acting chores admirably, but the story line and script are just too thin. Scenes of the boys turning to bear cubs feature zee-roe special effects, this one was made in the 60s, but c'mon!! The supporting roles are gleaned from the Who's Who of TV...Jimmy (Mousketeer) Boyd, Nancy (Beverly Hillbillys) Kulp, and Soupy (pie-in-the-face) Sales among others. This might be a good one for the grandkids...just to show them what we had to put up with in the 50s and 60s.