SnoopyStyle Troy Hurtubise is putting together a bear-proof suit to get close to the grizzlies. He recounts an encounter with a grizzly bear he calls the 'Old Man'. It's a strange obsession and not necessarily a healthy or smart one. It's not that he's a raving lunatic or that he's some kind of idiot. It's that he is fully committed. At times, one does wonder whether this guy is real or not. Some of the testing is hilarious like Three Stooges. His wilderness outfit hints at some kind of theatricality. His fringe jacket and beret looks like some costume. Part of this is absolutely showmanship unless bears started breathing fire. There's no reason to test the suit against an inferno. In the end, this is a character study but I still need that bear attack. I expected a bear attack. A bear needs to attack that suit.

matt-mccabebrown I heard about this movie somewhere and it intrigued me. Man designs a bear proof suit. Sounds pretty cool I thought. Found the poster. Saw the suit. Looks pretty cool I thought. Rented the film. Saw the film. What a chump I thought. Don't get me wrong, Mr Troy Hurtubise's dedication to his cause is highly respectable. He has clearly spent vast amounts of his time and money designing and building this suit, which he intended to use to study grizzly bears up close and personal, without fearing for his life. The film is pretty much structured in two halves. In the first half, Troy is pretty much hanging with his family and friends, most of whom seemed as bored of their lives and everyone around them. (The scene in the diner is priceless). Troy shows off his suit with a series of tests and odd stunts. Whilst wearing the suit (The mark VI) he gets his pals to swing huge logs into his chest, beat him up with baseball bats and pool cues. They even shoot the suit at one point. Don't worry even Troy wasn't dumb enough to be inside it at the time. Showing the suit off in an urban environment, its clear that he practically immobile, which makes the second half so funny. When they eventually get to "Grizzly Country" he finds out to his horror that he can't even stand in it on rough ground and keeps falling over. The look of despair on his face would be really sad if it weren't so funny. He spends five days up in the mountains, spends his time talking gibberish, showing off his knives and moaning about the suit. He even shaves with his massive bowie knife like Crocadile Dundee. Troy tries so hard to come across as a mans man. But to me, it just seemed he was trying so hard to escape the monotony of his boring day to day life that he couldn't see the forest for the trees

Godstud 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.

Tito-8 I enjoyed this film for a number of different reasons, and although it is certainly flawed, I'm definitely happy that I saw it. Troy Hurtubise comes off as an extremely likable person, and you just have to respect his effort to make a practical "grizzly-proof" suit, even if it does seem like a rather odd obsession. The movie was sometimes funny and often fascinating, so it was unfortunate that there were some boring scenes that made it past the final cut. But even with the slow spots, I have to heartily recommend this unique film. And, on a personal note, it was pretty cool to see my hometown on film...