Cocaine Bear

A movie takes a real gamble when it puts its cards on the table with the name. Movies like Hot Tub Time Machine and Snakes On A Plane let you know up front what they’re all about. If you go into something like Sharknado and expect a mournful rumination on the futility of hope, well, I mean, you’ll get that from the existence of the movie itself, but not from anything WITHIN the movie. But whether one of these movies ends up being fun or you curse the time you lost watching it, one thing these movies never do is go halfway. Whatever the bonkers premise is, these things jump right off the cliff with it before checking for water. I admire that. So it pains me to say Cocaine Bear may be the first of these meme movies that only goes halfway. It definitely doesn’t take itself seriously, I’ll give it that. A movie with a title and a premise like this CANNOT, under any circumstances, be positioned as grounded and sensible. This movie embraces the concept full force. It’s gory (although mostly CGI, boo), it’s got lots of stupid humor, and while nothing in the movie winks at the viewer, this isn’t treated like Die Hard in a forest either. It’s impossible not to have some fun with this movie, because the movie is having fun. But this movie doesn’t have enough of it, because it can’t stop focusing on side stories about people. Keri Russell’s 13 year old daughter and a friend have run away into the forest, and she’s looking for them. There’s a forest ranger and a wildlife inspector and they have an awkward flotation. There’s a trio of redneck hoodlums terrorizing park goers. There’s drug dealers looking for the cocaine; one of the dealers recently lost his wife and is grieving, and his dad is calloused to it and is only focused on getting back the drugs to save their skins. And there’s a cop chasing the dealers that is also distracted by the safety of the dog he just adopted and left behind with another officer. Is this a movie about a drug-snorting bear or is it a Robert Altman movie? TOO MANY SUBPLOTS FOR A MOVIE ABOUT A BEAR HEPPED UP ON GOOFBALLS. I did not come to Cocaine Bear for family squabbles, romance between middle-aged people, and missing children. I came to Cocaine Bear for a cocaine bear. It’s a painful dichotomy because the movie needs dead bodies, but it just spends way too much time and effort giving these people lives and arcs, when all we care about is the bear. The title promises one simple and silly concept, and it never fully delivers on it. Hell, most of the kills are cutaways, or you see the aftermath of the kill, so even the carnage is oddly unsatisfying. When it goes give the crazy movie the title promises, it can be really fun. The scene with the paramedics is awesome and gruesome, and the bear collapse scene is hilarious. I just wish it was this way all the time. Relentless madness, not long stretches of people wandering in a forest. Cut a few people out of this movie and go for more carnage, and this is a **** or even ****1/2 legendary popcorn flick. It’s still fun, but it’s never what it should be.