PROJECT GRIZZLY Movie Review

At the moment I sat down to watch director Peter Lynch's National Film Board of Canada production Project Grizzly last year I considered myself a relatively sophisticated moviegoer, able to separate—to a reasonable degree, anyway—complete fabrications from photographed reality. That's why when the lights went up after the screening was over I was able to assure myself that the utterly hilarious 72 minutes I had just laughed all the way through was in fact a terrifically entertaining and imaginative example of a “mockumentary”—a work of fiction in the style of a documentary, á la This Is Spinal Tap or Forgotten Silver. My pride in my own sophistication turned out to be premature, however, for the movie's biggest joke was on me. Project Grizzly—the mind-blowing chronicle of a colorful North Bay, Ontario adventurer and zealot named Troy Hurtubise who is determined to create the world's first grizzly bear-proof suit—is a real documentary. Apparently Hurtubise is something of a folk hero back home, and the film was created to chronicle his field testing of his latest model, a seven-foot-tall, 147-pound, two-piece suit made of titanium, chain mail and plastic, designed to take the ultimate licking while permitting its wearer's pulse to keep on ticking. A planned but unsuccessful confrontation with a free-roaming grizzly is the movie's denouement, but before that's attempted we get to see the fast-talking, utterly obsessed, feverishly enthusiastic, suited-up Hurtubise knocked on his ass by a 300-pound log, only to assure us after his reinforced helmet is removed that “I feel great, eh?” Take my word for it, you will too. Unbelievable.

NEXT STOP … Gates of Heaven, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, General Idi Amin Dada

1996 72m/C Troy Hurtubise; D: Peter Lynch; C: Tony Wannamker; M: Anne Bourne, Ken Myhr. NYR