Cocaine Bear – Review
95 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Jimmy Warden
Directed by Elizabeth Banks
**NOTE: this post will likely be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
Inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it, this wild thriller finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500- pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow … and blood.
“Based on true events.”
In this case, the “true event” is that once, a bear found some smuggled cocaine and ingested it, in 1985 Georgia.
Not sure what actually happened, but I’ll bet it probably would have been better for anyone it encountered if the damned bear had eaten a bunch of pot, instead.
**NOTE: the real bear overdosed on 34 kilos of cocaine, died, and is now stuffed and on display in Kentucky. Get the recap from Esquire’s Laura Martin HERE. **
Regardless, someone thought this was a good idea to base a movie on, so here we are.
Going in, I only know that it can be either an incredible, blood-soaked massacre, or else it can stink to high heaven (pun not intended).
The concept alone should be worth the price of admission, but after I saw the first trailer, I have to say that I wasn’t sold on the light-hearted, overly comedic tone director Elizabeth Banks had apparently chosen to take rather than an overtly (and seemingly appropriately) horrific tone.
I know, I didn’t go out of my way to watch the trailer, BTW, because they’re so spoiler-y now, either in reality or in their deceptive nature.
But, in order to be fair, I’m going to act under the all-too-common phenomenon of trailers being terrible indicators of both what a film is about as well as its overall quality and assume I know nothing about the film when I watch it.
Because I want to like it because the concept is so incredibly bat-shit crazy, and you should know by now that if there’s one thing I like, it’s bat-shit crazy movies.
With that, I will pause this and wait almost 2 more hours for my screening to start, then come back to this and let you know what I thought.
Cool?
Cool.
Let’s do this.
~~~~~
Well, it’s now the next morning, and I’ve had the night to sleep on it, and here are my thoughts.
No, we do not get a straight-up, blood-soaked, animal massacre movie.
But we do get a fair bit of gore here. It is rated R, after all. But the gore is almost always played for laughs. I mean, the people being eaten aren’t laughing, but the audience is, because the lead up is always a clear indication that the bear smells cocaine on them and, well, it needs a bump.
We’ve got the drug guys (Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson Jr) chasing down the abandoned (from a plane in the film’s opening scene) bags of drugs for their boss. We’ve got a mom (Keri Russell) searching for her daughter, who’s out in the national forest with the bear (and who’s already encountered it), and we’ve got a park ranger (played beautifully by Margot Martindale) on the prowl for a park inspector.
We get some delinquent kids running through the park causing problems for everyone.
And we get a cop from Tennessee who’s also investigating the drug angle after the plane’s pilot splatters on an old man’s driveway in Knoxville.
Surprisingly, however, the comedy is NOT overplayed here. Oh, it’s a comedy, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a balls to the walls, slapstick-y, overheated Taika Waititi-level of constantly juvenile comedy.
It’s more a throwback to good, solid, situational comedy punctuated by brief interludes of a bear eating people.
Somehow, almost impossibly, Elizabeth Banks has managed to figure out the lane Cocaine Bear needs to be in, the needle it needed to thread, and not only get the film there but KEEP IT THERE for its 90-minute run-time.
Look, I (or you, for that matter) may not agree with every decision Banks makes here, but objectively speaking, she made a creative decision, went for it, and most importantly STUCK TO IT.
Not once does Cocaine Bear shy away from the path Banks has chosen for it.
And that’s a good thing.
Cocaine Bear will likely overperform at the box-office, a welcome respite from Superheroes and other, more serious fare.
In fact, it’s only real competition might also come from a murderous bear, as Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey is also playing in select theaters.
The film is dedicated to Ray Liotta, who passed away last May.
Cocaine Bear hits theaters on Friday, February 24 and stars Keri Russell, Margo Martindale, Ray Liotta, Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Kristopher Hivju, Kahyun Kim, Christian Convery, Brooklyn Prince, and Scott Seiss.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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tags: movies, movie review, cocaine bear, Keri Russell, Margo Martindale, Ray Liotta, ALden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Kristopher Hivju, Kahyun Kim, Ghristian Convery, Brooklyn Prince, and Scott Seiss, elizabeth banks, jimmy warden, comedy, drama, true events