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Cocaine Bear is a film directed by Elizabeth Banks and is a film about a bear. And, as a line in the trailer and in the film confirms, it is a bear, on cocaine. This film is not really that deep. You get what you are paying for. There is in fact a bear on cocaine that goes on a killing spree, but is this film actually a fun time or is it as stupid as it sounds without the entertaining factor? Admittedly the first act of this film falls into the latter. While the film starts strong with a pretty decent bear attack and an early scene in the film where there is a funny moment on an airplane, the film quickly devolves into showing very little of the bear and introduces mostly boring or poorly written human characters. There are only two characters I genuinely liked throughout the film: Daveed played by O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Sari played by Kari Russell. However, for most of the first act there is nothing given to any character in the script that doesn't feel completely cliche or written for an edgy middle school play.
It wasn’t until a fight sequence that occurred near the end of the first act that made me really realize how awesome Daveed was that I actually cared about a character and Sari wasn’t even a badass momma bear (pun intended) until the second act. The rest of the characters were boring cliches like the cops or drug dealers or were just embarrassingly written park rangers and kids with weak character arcs and motivations. The second act was considerably better. A lot of the stupid characters were killed off in admittedly funny ways, those that weren’t killed off became more tolerable when they could play off better characters, and what made me love certain characters became stronger to the point where I actually began to care about the story arcs introduced in the first act.
Were there stupid story moments? Absolutely. Some of the twists near the second act were laughably terrible. Was what was good about the film still cliche? Also, true, but the film was effective at going along for a mostly self-aware stupid film. By the time the third act rolled around, I was invested enough though taken out of some of the character arcs. The climax of this film wrapped up many of the character arcs fairly well and, while I was disappointed by the action that took place, there was one gruesome and gory scene that made up for any disappointment very well. By the time of the epilogue, I was reminded of the fantastic post credit scenes in Bullet Train and felt as though I was being whirled up into an absolutely fun film like that one. However, I have had some time to think about the film.
The reality is, this is a film that can have its fun moments and good characters, but the characters were only made great by the fantastic actors playing them. The entire dialogue was passable at best, and the script was really sloppy throughout that first act and didn’t exactly become better throughout the movie. The only things that saved the movie from the script were some hilariously dumb moments which at times was helped by its inept script and other times stood on its own by its competent directing and acting. I will say, by the end, while I couldn’t see gold in the characters or the film as a whole, I could very much enjoy the film for what it was and the awesome moments it had. In a way, its bad quality in the script only made me laugh more in the second and third acts, but its first act still remains a great stain on the quality of the film. It's a mess, but if you can make it through the first act, it's a decent time. Final Verdict: 6/10
Written by Kurt Kreeger.
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