Jack the Bear VHS

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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