Normally I try to come up with an anecdote here, something about me personally and why I went to see a particular movie or maybe something about the people who made it and other films they’ve made that I did or didn’t enjoy. But this is Cocaine Bear, a movie based very, very loosely on true events directed by Elizabeth Banks. I like Banks as an actor, but my only exposure to her work as a director was the rather awful 2019 Charlie’s Angels movie. That wasn’t exactly filling me with confidence.
But c’mon. It’s a movie about a bear that eats a lot of cocaine. At least the premise is unique.
The year is 1985. A drug smuggler in a plane, clearly high on his own supply, is tossing dufflel bags of coke out a door before trying to jump out himself. It doesn’t quite work as he is dead when he hits the ground. Since most of the drugs are lost in a national park in Georgia, that just means that a lot of people are headed to the park for a number of reasons. Middle schooler Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) is cutting school to paint a hidden waterfall with her friend Henry (Christian Convery). Dee Dee’s mom Sari (Keri Russell, the closest the movie has a human lead) goes to get her daughter and enlists the help of park ranger Liz (Margot Martindale) and local wildlife expert Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). Missouri-area drug lord Syd (Ray Liotta in one of his final roles) dispatches his underline Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr) and his son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) to get the coke. Local gang the Duchamps like causing trouble in the park anyway. And finally, Knoxville detective Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr) is following a lead to Syd’s organization there himself.
There’s just one small problem for all involved: there’s a bear in the forest, and she’s already found the cocaine, and quite frankly, she seems to love the stuff. Said bear is by turns violent or sleepy, easily distracted or focused like a laser beam. Cocaine hits this bear like Popeye’s spinach, allowing the bear to accomplish very gory acts of violence against a lot of people who cross her path. The thing is, different characters have different reactions to the coked up bear. They seem to range from curiosity to pure terror. This is the sort of movie where anyone can die no matter how sympathetic they may be for the audience, but in the grand scheme of things, this is the bear’s movie, and the bear earned that spot.
Truthfully, the human characters are generally two dimensional at best, their personalities only as good as the actor playing them can conjure up. That helps a bit: though Banks actually manages to frame some outright tense scenes of the bear stalking people who may or may not have realized how dangerous the bear is, her humans characters aren’t defined enough to let the ones that don’t make it particularly empathetic. That may be the point. This is the sort of movie that might best be viewed as a live action cartoon. Considering the bear is almost certainly CGI, that makes a certain amount of sense.
But is Cocaine Bear any good? I found it amusing, and Banks’s direction is a lot better here than it was in Charlie’s Angels. Her cast is game, and I get the impression that everyone involved knew exactly what kind of movie they were making. I was entertained enough. It’s fine for what it is, but nothing I would call great. I’d say you need to be in the right frame of mind to see Cocaine Bear, but let’s face it: if you are going, you’re probably in the right frame of mind already.
Grade: B-
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