One fateful day in 1985, a black bear in the American state of Georgia ingested a duffel bag full of cocaine that had been thrown out of a plane by drug smuggler Andrew Thornton, discarded before he fell to his death. The inquisitive bear promptly expired, likely in agony, and its taxidermied body is now on display in Lexington, Kentucky. For his screenwriting debut, Jimmy Warden’s Cocaine Bear draws from this bizarre true story, but because that version would make for a genuinely horrible and fairly boring viewing experience, Warden and director Elizabeth Banks have instead made their coked-up CGI version of the 80s bear go on a murderous rampage as she searches for more cocaine to consume.
Cocaine Bear gave itself a lot to live up to. The trailer truly promised a film for our times – a ravenous bear high out of her skull, lightly anthropomorphised by virtue of her newfound drug habit, leaping into a moving ambulance and doing a line off a severed leg. With the current horrorscape tragically devoid of the likes of Snakes on a Plane (2006) or Slugs (1988), audiences yearn for the earnestly ridiculous. A bear that did cocaine is a story as pure and memeable as say, 30-50 feral hogs.
Cocaine Bear would be flirting with disaster if it leaned too heavily on anything other than the titular twatted ursus americanus. Its succinct premise couldn’t work if the film itself was too clever, too knowing, too slapstick, or if it tried to make a serious ethical point about anything at all. Fortunately Cocaine Bear attempts none of these things. The majority of the dialogue is concerned with the fact that “The bear, it f*cking did cocaine!”
There is no attempt made to moralise about man encroaching on nature, or on the ethics of the international drugs trade. There are, as promised, truckloads of coke-dusted severed limbs – and a few entrails thrown in for good measure. Yet Cocaine Bear is also played fairly straight, with no winking at the camera or excruciatingly self-aware antics as one might fear in a horror comedy, managing to maintain a tongue-in-cheek tone that isn’t too overt. The CGI, however, is a little more testing – you really must suspend your disbelief, for if there is even a tiny chink in the double-think required to believe in this keyed-up bear, your enjoyment of the film is screwed.
But if you can believe in her, you’ll root for Cocaine Bear, as well as the eclectic cast of humans she’s pursuing. Among them are two feisty bear-defying children – one of whom is Henry, played by the excellent Christian Convery, who dresses like a tiny doomsday prepper and really loves saying “f*ck”. Trying to retrieve the cocaine are sweet, recently bereaved Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) and exasperated Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr) who fumble their way through their mission, in a manner that is saved from becoming grating once Eddie’s drug lord dad Syd (played by Ray Liotta in his final role before his untimely death) arrives to counterbalance their cartoonishness by being adequately gnarly.
Such a glowing appraisal will inevitably be met with the question “Yes, but how can it actually be good?” The thing is, Cocaine Bear transcends terms such as ‘good’ and instantly enters the realm of ‘beloved trash’. It will be viewed at teen sleepovers, as a romantic icebreaker, and when no one can decide what to watch for decades to come – the sort of uncomplicated, silly, surreal viewing experience that might not change your life, but will certainly enrich it.
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ANTICIPATION.
Obviously among this year’s cinematic high points. 5
ENJOYMENT.
Exactly what it claimed to be. Nothing more, nothing less than a bear on cocaine. 4
IN RETROSPECT.
Cocaine Bear is not to be sniffed at, but I wish it had come out on Valentine’s Day. 3
Directed by
Elizabeth Banks
Starring
Keri Russell, Margo Martindale, Alden Ehrenreich, O'Shea Jackson Jr, Brooklynn Prince
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