Shearer: 'Furry Vengeance' not as awful as it may seem

Last month marked the one-year anniversary of the Cinema File column. Looking back at the list of movies I've written about in the last twelve months, I like to think there's a decent variety of film genres represented in there. Although I'm known for having a sweet tooth for horror movies, and often gravitate towards lesser-known fare, I never wanted to come across as some kind of a snob (I even had a lot of complimentary things to say about "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," one of the worst-reviewed films of 2009). I'll watch just about anything, and relish the opportunity to check out so-called box office bombs. Poorly received by critics and audiences alike, "Furry Vengeance" is the most recent example of that kind of movie, but I don't think it necessarily deserves to be.

Brendan Fraser stars as Dan Sanders, a real estate developer who uproots his wife Tammy (Brooke Shields) and teenage son Tyler (Matt Prokop) to live in a new home on the site where Dan's company is about to clear out acres and acres of wildlife. Constantly trying to prove his efficiency to his corporate boss Lyman (Ken Jeong from "Role Models"), while also dealing with his family's inability to adjust to life in the middle of nowhere, Dan becomes the target of a cunning and vindictive raccoon's plot to stop the forest's demise. Facing an army of angry squirrels, birds, skunks and bears, Dan's mental and physical well-being are put to the test as the animals stop at nothing to protect their habitat.

The appeal of "Furry Vengeance" is supposed to hinge upon the series of gags in which Fraser's character becomes humiliated and or injured in various ways by the animals. Families will laugh seeing Dan take a skunk's spray full force into his mouth, watching him run around in his wife's pink track suit, or trapped inside a