Trailer—Project Grizzly

source: Project Grizzly

It was many years ago I got to get to know Troy. I met him at Cracker Jacks in Lindsay Ontario. I sat and listened to a ton of stories from this man. Troy had just finished writing a book called. White Tape. Even got him to sign it. Great friend and solid man.

As many have noted, this film is not about a man fighting a grizzly bear, despite what the pitch would seem to promise. It's about a man eccentric enough to build a suit for a rematch against a bear that once pushed him over. In other words, it's about a fricking egotistical moron with too much time and money on his hands and a documentary crew giving us the most boring version. It's Moby Dick for rednecks and this time there is no climax. Troy talks about his knives, his father and rambles almost incoherently about an encounter with a bear. He makes a number of suits and there are some funny Jackass like test runs. Had the documentary explored more of the mans psychosis (like the incredible Grizzly Man) it would be of some interest, instead it pats Troy on the head to elicit cheap laughs. You're better off going elsewhere for more intelligent and well constructed documentaries.

This is a hilarious documentary about Troy Hurtubise, a Canadian scrapyard worker who, after an encounter in the forest with a grizzly bear, devotes his life and money to researching and building a grizzly-proof suit. Troy's dialogue alone is reason enough to watch this movie, but add camera shots of his "research" (Troy (in the suit) standing in front of a 5-ton pickup at 50km per hour, throwing himself off the Niagara embarkment, getting hit by a huge log suspended in a tree) and it's brilliant comedy.

Project Grizzly (1996) *** (out of 4) Documentary on Troy Hurtubise, a Canadian man who was attacked by a grizzly so to get revenge he builds a protective suit and goes out to find another grizzly to fight. If this guy sounds strange then that's because he really is. The ending is a disappointment as the fight never happens but everything that comes before this is pretty entertaining because this guy is just so damn weird. He rambles on about stuff he has no idea about and I can't help but wonder if this guy was the inspiration for all those Holiday Inn commercials that you see all over television. Apparently Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of this movie and I'm sure he could have fun turning this into a movie of his own.

I saw this film at the theater when it first came out and then again a couple of weeks ago ( I bought the DVD). I found it equally as enjoyable the second time around and applaud the talents of Lynch and Hertubise. I highly recommend this film to anyone who likes the real life quirkiness of the common obsessionist or a Canadian film buff. This film made me laugh out loud more than once and kept me interested throughout. I found that the humanness and the landscape of the film rings true and I believe that most people will relate to the character(s) on some level. I will definitely share this one with friends; it has party movie written all over it. Just sit back and take a sometimes fast, sometimes zany, ride. There are moments of tension, triumph and defeat that I find unforgettable.

The movie was funny and brilliant. Here's your everyman trying to make something different and following a dream. The funny thing isn't that he tried to design the suit for Grizzly bears but that after the film he actually redirected his thinking towards a suit designed to protect firefighters. While doing this and discovering his suit wasn't safe unless it was fireproof, he managed to create a compound that MIT professors said couldn't be made. He created a ceramic? compound that he demonstrated in his own unique way. He placed a small brick of it on top of a helmet and had a braizing torch directed on the top of it for 10 minutes (at 5000 degrees). After 10 minutes the temperate had risen barely 10 degrees. A crackpot? no doubt :) But likely a backyard genius too. See it once and remember that not all inventions in history were used in the original purpose that the creator envisioned.

After surviving an attack by a grizzly bear, some Canadian yahoo spends the rest of his life trying to design a suit that will . . . help you survive a bear attack. We watch the development of his suit, which involves smoking cigarettes and being crazy, until the Canadian government approves it for testing. It's a funny movie but not worth much but a few laughs.

Interested in seeing a kind of half-baked superhero-themed movie? Do Not Be Deceived. Project Grizzly is not about Troy-Man from the Great White North Bay; rather, it is a chilling tale about a normal (?) fellow who's taken his defiance of nature to a level not fit for yourself or your friends. And trust me on that. And while it is hard not to watch Troy get repeatedly whupped by log-catapults and pick-up trucks, or be pushed off the Niagara Escarpment (!) during 'tests' of his bearproof suit, the picture does run on. Ahhh, but wait. You'll be left curiously satisfied by watching it - knowing that your crazy friend Troy from grade school who ate worms, marbles, gravel or what-have-you might just have amounted to something.