Jack the Bear

After the death of his wife, John Leary (Danny DeVito) vows to make a new life for himself and his two sons, Jack and Dylan (Robert J. Steinmiller, Jr. and Miko Hughes). He moves the family to Oakland and gets a job as the monster host of a late night horror TV show. Though all three try to cope with the great loss in their lives, Jack find's his father's silly antics and alcoholism a confusing and embarrassing burden. Gary Sinise and Julia Louis-Dreyfus co-star in this human look at the joys and pains of growing up.

It's not hard to see what attracted director Marshall Herskovitz (TV's thirtysomething) and writer Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List) to this tragicomic story of a widower trying to keep life together for his two young sons. And Danny DeVito gives them a surprisingly sympathetic and low-key performance that capably blends pathos and humor. But the story--about Jack's attempts to get his drinking under control, even while holding down a job as a late-night TV horror-movie host--descends into bathos. Then it gets downright weird and scary when the family's strange neo-Nazi neighbor (a popeyed Gary Sinise) takes an unhealthy interest in one of the children. Jack the Bear sat on the shelf for a couple of years while Herskovitz reworked it, but it was like changing the tires on a car with a broken drive-train. --Marshall Fine