Cocaine Bear is about a bear that does cocaine, and like its spiritual predecessor Snakes on a Plane, its wild title and premise are just about all that it has going for it. Even the fact that Elizabeth Banks’ film is loosely based on a true story turns out to be inconsequential; the primary failing of this R-rated black comedy has nothing to do with its realism (or lack thereof) but, instead, with its broad, cartoonish, desperate-to-be-outrageous humorlessness. The only snorts it warrants are of the disdainful variety.
Produced by the usually reliable Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Cocaine Bear (which premieres Feb. 24) is remarkable in that the sole idea in its narcotized head is to have multiple men and women scream about how the bear that’s pursuing them is unhinged because it’s high as a kite.
Jimmy Warden’s script believes that asking audiences to repeatedly laugh at its central conceit is enough, or at least that’s the persistent impression one gleans from a story that otherwise features no distinctive characters, funny one-liners, or witty scenarios. To call the proceedings one-note is to oversell their depth; the sheer dearth of ideas in this fiasco is almost impressively profound.
Matthew Rhys fares best in Cocaine Bear because, after dumping numerous duffel bags of cocaine out an airplane flying over Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest in 1985, his smuggler Andrew Thornton II—who was a real crook, as confirmed by non-fiction news reports presented here—perishes during his ensuing skydive. The rest of the film’s cast, alas, must endure greater stretches of embarrassing screen time.
Among that group, arguably none suffer worse than Keri Russell as Sari, who we’re told is a nurse but who more accurately sums herself up when, in the climax, she introduces herself by proclaiming, “I’m the mom!” That she is, and nothing more, with Russell saddled with a monumentally thankless role as a single mother endeavoring to find daughter Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince) and her best friend Henry (Christian Convery) in the woods, where they’re playing hooky and have come face-to-face with the overstimulated animal.
The nominal reason these kids are in the wilderness is that Dee Dee wants to paint a waterfall, but this motivation is about as tossed off as everything else in Cocaine Bear. There’s no reason to expect airtight logic from an affair like this, but the laziness on display nonetheless proves enervating as Banks and Warden introduce the rest of their protagonists, including a third alum from The Americans.
Forced to retrieve the missing coke by their angry drug-dealing boss Syd (Ray Liotta), Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) frets about the condition of his sports jersey and Air Jordans, and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) mopes about the recent death of his wife, whose name was misspelled when he had it tattooed on his chest. The duo eventually runs afoul of three bumbling park delinquents, who themselves are in the crosshairs of ranger Liz (Margo Martindale), who when not griping about thieving kids is grousing about Sari interfering with her anticipated romantic time with animal-rights activist Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson).
All of this is ignorable, as Cocaine Bear half-heartedly develops paper-thin relationships that quickly fall by the wayside once its stick figures are attacked by the bear, which—did I mention?—loves cocaine. Further populating this tale is detective Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), who has a fluffy new dog that he leaves with colleague Reba (Ayoola Smart) so he can investigate the missing cocaine.
No sooner has he arrived in Georgia than he’s succeeded in his mission, since, at every turn, the film has no interest in actual, credible plotting; it merely cares about throwing a bunch of frantic cardboard cut-outs in the path of its monster so they can be mauled, torn apart, and decapitated in scenes that somehow think that excessive (unreal) gore is the surest path to hilarity.
Because it doesn’t want to skimp on over-the-top kills, Cocaine Bear boasts even more lambs to the slaughter, like tourists Olaf (Kristofer Hivju) and Elsa (Hannah Hoekstra), one of whom dies so the other can survive long enough to become a handy—and then casually cast aside—narrative device.
Between the thoughtless sketchiness of their construction and the callous brutality of their demises, these characters feel like offensive insults to the actors tasked with playing them, especially in the case of Martindale, who’s about one thousand times too accomplished to be subjected to such ugliness. That the actress is up for outlandish madness speaks well of her, but Banks and Warden only repay her gameness with disrespect.
As for the bear, it resembles a clumsy digital creation when it’s bounding through the woods, rapidly scaling trees and rolling around in white powder, and it looks even phonier during its many growling close-ups. As a result, there’s no uproarious absurdity to the sight of it reveling in illicit substances, nor any tension from the many bizarre sequences that Banks stages for genuine suspense.
The director doesn’t appear to know if she wants to amuse or terrify, and thus settles on a middle ground where neither are possible. For a film built around a bear that— have you heard?—does cocaine, there’s little manic, frazzled energy or wonky delirium to the action, which largely plods along without purpose.
Though it’s dedicated to his memory, the late Ray Liotta is also asked to flounder about in a part that seems to have been conceived on a whim, his Syd a clichéd heavy whose one “thing” is that he neglects his grandson. It’s moviegoers, however, who are truly given short shrift by Cocaine Bear.
Banks’ film assumes its title will both get people into seats and then suffice when it comes to entertaining them, compensating for a dearth of jokes, details and basic craftsmanship—the last of which is epitomized by a late reference to a mutilated victim that the director then suddenly, bizarrely cuts to, thereby putting the cart before the horse. Slapdash beyond repair, it’s the sort of squandered-potential debacle to which one should just say no.
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