Live Action
5. The Country Bears
Let's get the hate out of the way early, shall we? I enjoyed The Country Bears. I enjoyed The Country Bears a lot. I enjoyed The Country Bears so much, I put it on this list of underrated modern classics. It was either this or Rocketman for the controversial spot, and I picked this one for a very specific reason. It's a movie based on a Disney theme park ride that got the point of the original ride. Yes, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were fun, but the ride didn't have Jack Sparrow in it until the films did so well that they'd be stupid to not have him in there. Country Bears, on the other hand, takes the core concept of the ride (which wasn't too much of a concept to begin with) and runs with it. After becoming a smash hit, The Country Bears, like any other rock band before them, broke up in a fit of egos and tempers. Years later, a cub by the name of Beary would run away from home in order to reunite them and save their famed music hall from destruction. That's it. That's the major concept of the film, which is used to tell a story of music, friendship, and Christopher Walken demolishing several model music halls whilst screaming "OH NO!" in the most comedic way. It's a fun Disney movie, and it makes the concept of a movie based on a theme park ride look as good of an idea as any of the Pirates films ever did. Better still, this didn't spawn four entries with varying degrees of quality, and it didn't make us all tired of seeing Johnny Depp on the big screen. On top of all of that, it has a lot of fun cameos from music figures like Brian Setzer, Queen Latifah, and even Willie Nelson. And again, it features a cartoonishly evil Christopher Walken. If you watched Pirates of the Caribbean, if you like musicals, and if you even laughed at Christopher Walken's ridiculousness in the trailer for Balls of Fury, then you have no excuse to knock this film without trying. Think of it as Disney's own Muppet Movie, before they got the rights to The Muppets.