Cocaine Bear

The secret to camp is the same as the secret to comedy; You have to pretend that the material is serious and that you're not in on the joke.  Cocaine Bear gives us a large cast of talented actors (including the late Ray Liotta in his final role) who play this material to the hilt like they're in on the joke, and that is one of the movie's biggest failings.

It's other failing is that it's a one-joke concept stretched thin at 95 minutes.  I will admit to smiling a few times, and laughing out loud during one sequence where the coked up bear simply collapses from exhaustion on top of somebody, trapping him underneath.  But, the movie doesn't have the energy to support its thin premise for such an extended time, not even with the actors playing to the rafters like they do here.  The movie exists simply to make a lot of dumb jokes, and for a lot of bloody carnage scenes.  Once you realize that, the movie's repetitive nature reveals itself.  Much like with her failed Charlie's Angels reboot from 2019, director Elizabeth Banks simply doesn't know how to make us care about the characters up on the screen.

The movie actually has its background in a real event.  In 1985, convicted drug smuggler Andrew Thornton dropped millions of dollars worth of cocaine from a plane over a national park in Georgia.  A black bear happened upon the cocaine, and died after eating it.  In the Hollywood telling, the bear goes berserk, becomes an addict, and starts killing off different groups of random people who happen to be in the park for different reasons.  There's a worried mother (Keri Russell) who is looking for her young daughter (Brooklynn Prince) and her friend (Christian Convery) who skipped school to paint some scenery, a trigger-happy forest ranger (Margo Martindale) with her dippy animal activist boy toy (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), a gang of teen hooligans, and a group of professional criminals (led by Liotta) who have come searching for the cocaine after it goes missing.

Cocaine Bear juggles multiple plots, storylines, and characters, which unfortunately leaves the computer generated bear off camera for longer periods of time than you might expect.  And since everybody is playing this material like they know they're in a goofy movie, there's not a single moment that feels right.  It's the same problem I had with Bullet Train a while back.  If everybody is trying to outshine everybody else with their goofy and outlandish performance, then I start to get bored, because it's no longer a movie, it's just a competition between the cast to see who can stand out the most.  The movie tries for an emotional core with the plot of Russell searching for the missing children, but this too falls flat, because writer Jimmy Warden forgets to make them interesting enough for the audience to get involved.

This is a movie that tries to mix shock horror and gore with laughs, which has been done before, but it feels off here.  The cast know what kind of movie they're in, and act like they're trying to grab our attention every time they're on camera.  There's some fun to be had here for sure, but the movie also overstays its welcome by a large margin. 

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