Review: Cocaine Bear is a strangely darling kitsch fest
It’s one of the nagging idiosyncrasies of American entertainment that great personalities so often make lasting impressions on their audience via subpar material. For the last two decades, Elizabeth Banks has been one of the most consistently engaging comic actors Hollywood has to offer — yet what can one say of her résumé? Aside from the early career “highs,” so to speak, of White Hot American Summer and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, plus a cute cameo in Catch Me If You Can, her meal ticket gig in the Hunger Games franchise, and a smart turn as conservative talk show host Avery Jessup in 30 Rock, Banks has never been at the center of a project that’s proven itself worthy of her daft, jackal-eyed, nearly Stepfordian composure.
Almost as if to signal the inadequacy of studios’ imagination, in recent years, Banks has taken to directing: she helmed the first sequel to Pitch Perfect (‘15), delivered an unloved reboot of the Charlie’s Angels series (‘19), and has now given us Cocaine Bear — a horror comedy inspired by a true-life event in which a black bear devoured millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine.
When the incident actually took place, in 1985, there were no human fatalities aside from the drug smuggler who’d failed to open his parachute after dropping forty pounds of packaged goods while flying over a forest in northern Georgia… but Ms. Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden have taken a few liberties. And, in the process, severed a few limbs and unwound some intestines to boot.
Cocaine Bear is a strangely darling kitsch fest. It emulates the family adventure comedies of mid-’80s Hollywood, but it does so without being nauseating in the manner of so many movies and TV shows made today (e.g. It, Stranger Things, The Goldbergs), perhaps because it knows better than to linger on nostalgia. Instead, Banks infuses every frame with an evocative yet demure retro musk. Similarly, the gore is dished out with indulgent yet considered regularity — vividly on display, yet never once hijacking or compromising Warden’s underlying narrative.
We get to watch as the team makes good on a simple premise again and again: bear does coke, bear gets rowdy, bear murders people. But the structure upon which all this chaos unfolds is careful and steady. And that’s more than can be said of many of the comedies whence Ms. Banks has heretofore earned her bread and butter.
She’s arranged a killer ensemble, too. Keri Russell makes for a fitting Final Girl — or Mom, in this case — and ambassador to this John Hughes-adjacent metaverse; O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Alden Ehrenreich are in good form as a pair of weary goons hunting for their boss’ missing powder; Margo Martindale and Jesse Tyler Ferguson have fun bits as ill-fated wildlife aficionados; Florida Project-famed Brooklyn Prince is at her scowling yet headstrong best as Russell’s impetuous daughter, and young Christian Convery is adorable as her best friend, Henry. (On witnessing another character lose his legs: “It’s something I’d rather forget, but it does strike me as the kind of thing a man [i.e., an eight-year-old boy] holds onto.”) And Ray Liotta takes his final onscreen bow with Promethean flair.
Silly as it may be, there’s a kind of graceful matter-of-factness to Cocaine Bear: it gives you precisely what it tells you it will, nothing more and nothing less, with competency and maybe even a teensy weensy note of artistry. It’s always refreshing to be reminded that the movies are a place to have a good time — and indeed, as we look ahead to spring (and the mating season), I’ll now be seriously reconsidering any plans for woodland hikes in favor of carpeted aisles and run-of-the-mill, unlaced popcorn.
