EAT • SLEEP • REVIEW • REPEAT
COCAINE BEAR
Not quite the Class A B-movie it promises.
With mainstream cinema as increasingly sanitised as it is, the power of a good movie title should not be underestimated. In a world of blandness, random word salads, and an overreliance on colons, a punchy film name is everything.
Just look at Snakes on a Plane. Put bluntly, the film wouldn’t have done anywhere near the business it did without that quirky title to help it cut through. Of course, it’s not always that simple, and cinema history is littered with eccentrically named movies that never made a penny, however, a little creative titling and a dose of clever marketing can be all it takes to make a hit.
But - and this is a big but - much like Snakes on a Plane, the quality of a film’s title has no real bearing on the quality of the film itself. As such, after all the memes, buzz, and marketing madness, can Cocaine Bear truly live up to all the hype?
After ingesting a significant amount of cocaine, a 500-pound black bear embarks on a drug-fuelled rampage across the Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest. Out for blood and more blow, the coke-fuelled apex predator crosses paths with an oddball assortment of cops, criminals, tourists, and teenagers, all caught in a battle of survival against this dangerous doped-up beast.
From the moment the batshit title announced itself to the world, Cocaine Bear’s marketing has been on an absolute tear. In fact, coming little over a month after the similarly successful M3GAN campaign, it’s been one hell of a year so far for low-budget, horror-tinged offerings punching way above their weight.
Much like M3GAN, from the second Cocaine Bear’s trailer landed, you just knew that a new pop culture moment had been born. In more ways than one, the trailer was wild, with a punchiness and an overt simplicity that instantly got across the utter insanity of its setup.
Like all of Cocaine Bear’s marketing, the trailer was as blunt as a block of coke to the face, yet it was incredibly effective. Cutting right to the core of its setup’s inherent stupidity, the trailer made it clear this was a film not to be taken seriously, however, one brilliant trailer does not a good movie make, and, even in these early stages, the sense that Cocaine Bear had already blown its load was very real.
It’s a fear not without precedent, as so many likeminded movies before it have come in hot with a cracking trailer, only to be swiftly and brutally found out upon its release. Even with the marketing machine in full swing, that worry has some substance here, and while that’s not to say there isn’t a good film to be found in Cocaine Bear, the early buzz promised so much more.
Without a doubt, there’s much to enjoy with what Cocaine Bear lines up for us, however, it’s hard not to feel somewhat disappointed that director Elizabeth Banks hasn’t gone that little bit further with it all. For a film that so desperately wants to prove its anarchic credentials, Cocaine Bear plays things surprisingly safe.
On the face of it, as a concept, Cocaine Bear promises little. This is a film about a killer coke-snorting bear after all. It’s pretty simple. As such, going in cold is probably your best bet for getting the most from the film, however, for anyone who has bought into the marketing hype, there’s bound to be at least a little disappointment.
Like a coked-up Jaws, once Elizabeth Banks’ film gets going, it’s pretty damn ruthless in its execution, draining as much blood as humanly possible from a concept that, on the surface at least, feels like a one-joke SNL sketch at best. With its tongue firmly lodged in its cheek, Cocaine Bear’s blend of jovial irreverence and killer animal horror works well enough, offering the kind of knockabout, low commitment cinema you sometimes need.
Sure, the plot makes absolutely no sense, and sure the story is so thin it often struggles to justify its (admittedly swift) 95-minute run time, yet when it gets cooking, these issues take a back seat. What can I say? If you’re coming into a film called Cocaine Bear looking for a sensible, narratively expansive time, that may be a you problem. The whole thing is absolutely unbelievable and absolutely ridiculous, but that’s half the point.
It certainly helps when you’ve got a cast as up for the ridiculous task at hand as we have here. From Alden Ehrenreich and O’Shea Jackson Jr, to esteemed character actors Margo Martindale and Isiah Whitlock Jr, to the dearly departed Ray Liotta and the oddly loveable killer bear himself, Cocaine Bear’s ensemble is stuffed with solid talent that, despite none of them having particularly compelling characters to work with, know the assignment and have fun while completing it.
However, the ultimate problem with the cast is that, as with the rest of the film, fun is about their limit. Which is absolutely fine and certainly a good reason to give Cocaine Bear a bash, but with a concept as buck-wild as this, the limit should’ve been pushed so much further.
It’s silly, it’s wild, it’s trashy, yet, by the time the credits roll, it’s hard to shake the lingering feeling that it could’ve been sillier, wilder, and trashier. Frequently feeling like a throwback to the kind of shenanigans-heavy stoner comedies that littered the early 2000s, there are many moments within Cocaine Bear where the script gets too caught up in its own irreverence and whimsy to follow through on its outrageous ideas.
With hints of everything from the Farrellys to the Coens to Raimi to Tarantino, Elizabeth Banks pulls a lot of influence from a lot of sources, landing somewhere safely in the middle of it all. Yet, for all the casual enjoyment this mix offers, safe feels more than a little underwhelming, as the high built from Cocaine Bear’s buzzy setup swiftly fades.
Not nearly as riotous as its premise promises, Cocaine Bear isn’t quite the Class A B-movie it could’ve been, yet offers a tonne of fun nonetheless. Getting high on its own marketing supply, Cocaine Bear is a silly, trashy blast, yet finds it all undercut by an undercooked plot, limp humour, and an overload of underwhelming characters.
