A couple of hippies living in Los Angeles who were forced to grow up and get jobs when they had kids, decide they've had enough of the smoggy city and pack up their family to move to the Rocky Mountains. Once there they play with bears and befriend a grizzled old mountain man. That is, when they aren't running for their lives from wolves or a big grizzly named Three Toes.
Ah, the Wilderness Family. Despite its laughable premise, it's actually one of the better of the "getting back to nature" genre of family dramas that popped up in the 1960s and 1970s, when the times they were a-changing and people thought by the 1980s the world would be overpopulated with unbreathable air and no natural resources left. Really, there's not much wrong with the idea of living the natural life and getting away from the crowded cities. But these movies were often so irresponsibly naive, treating living off the land like it' s a cake walk and there are just as many Disney-style friendly wild animals as there are ones that will kill you. Oh and they never talk about bugs. As anyone who has ever been camping can attest, bugs are the worst. Nature's PR guy should get a raise for keeping bugs out of the brochures. And I don't want to even get into understanding why these movies all seem to have old men wandering around the mountains being friendly with kids.
Like I said, this movie is one of the better examples of this genre. At least here it is shown that you have to work to live in the wild and there are some dangers, unlike the completely unrealistic "My Side of the Mountain," where a kid goes to live in the wilderness and befriends animals and a creepy old guy who plays a flute. That kid had it easy but there is some effort made here to portray the struggle it takes to live in the wild, although this is still far from realistic. The cast here is decent, led by Robert Logan as the stubborn hippie dad and George Buck Flower as the mountain man. Corny hippie soundtrack oddly works. As always with these types of films, the best part is the scenery. No sets or cheap CGI fakery going on, just real grass, trees, rivers, mountains, and animals. It adds an authenticity to things missing today. Plus, who doesn't love a good view? This was followed by two sequels that are pretty much more of the same.
