Cocaine Bear

Director; Elizabeth Banks (USA). Year of Release: 2023

1985, a light airplane, swirling above the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia. Jefferson Starship are playing mediocre MOR as a man wildly throws paper packages and red holdalls out of the open door. When he is done, he puts on a parachute and prepares himself to jump. On which, he hits his head on the side of the plane, and slumps out of the aircraft to his death. Television stations soon report the death of a known drug dealer in very strange circumstances,

Just to give us a sense of time and place, we don’t just see the actual news reports of the story on which this film is (very loosely) based. There are also the “Just Say No” ads, featuring both Nancy Reagan and Pee Wee Hermann. Look, the film seems to be saying to us. The story that you’re about to see might seem unbelievable, but is it any less believable than these public information films which actually appeared on prime time television?

Meanwhile, in the National Forest, a couple is hiking. He has a Scandinavian accent and has an indefensible red beard. She is wearing a stetson. If this film has any sense of justice, they should be brutally removed within the first 10 minutes. Sure enough, as they encounter a bear which has misguidedly ingested most of the contents of one of those paper packages, bloodshed ensues. The scene ends with half a leg being casually flung across the forest.

One by one, we are introduced to the characters with whom we will be spending the next hour and a half. There’s Dee Dee and Henry; who are skipping school so they can go and paint the park’s hidden waterfall. They are hotly pursued by Dee Dee’s mother Sari. There’s Daveed who works for Syd – the drug dealer who is worried where his packages of cocaine have landed. Daveed brings along Eddie, Syd’s reluctant son who is still mourning his recently deceased partner.

Then there’s the park ranger Liz, who has just doused herself in perfume to try to attract the animal inspector Peter. There’s the gang of skateboarding teenagers responsible for some recent knife attacks in the park. There’s Bob the cop who has been chasing Syd for years, and his assistant. There’s a couple of paramedics who were called to the scene to deal with a case of concussion but end up facing something much more grisly.

Did I miss anyone?`Almost certainly. Despite the short running time, the film flings character after character at us. This Is partly from necessity, given the high body count and the need to keep some suspense about who will survive and who won’t. But it is also dramatically risky. There are too many films with too many underdeveloped characters who are indistinguishable from each other, which lead to us spending most of the film trying to identify which character is which.

So it is very much to Cocaine Bear’s credit that each character is afforded some personality, and even an idiot like me is able to keep up with who is whom. In a film which is basically the same joke being told over and over again, time is allowed for character development, which means that – exciting as they are when they come – we are not only subjected to an endless series of scenes of a highly stimulated bear ripping people to pieces.

There is an occasional lapse into sentimentality – even the bear is awarded some maternal responsibility for her cubs. At the same time, Cocaine Bear does not always take the easy route of plumbing for the lowest common denominator. When the pre-teens Dee Dee and Henry encounter cocaine, their first reaction is not to be appalled but to tentatively try some for themselves. If this has the moral majority up in arms, then consider it a job well done.

The CGI used to render the bear is very basic, almost as if the film is not just set in the mid-1980s, but was made using 80s technology. The bear changes in size regularly, and rarely looks like a living, breathing, bear. And do you know what? This does not matter one bit. On a purely technical level, Cocaine Bear is not as believable as the latest franchise film playing at your nearest Enormodrome, but it has an authenticity that they lack. It’s not about the bear.

A film with such a flimsy plotline and lack of actual plot development does not deserve to be anywhere near as good as Cocaine Bear turns out to be. I think this is because the money that was saved on special effects was spent on hiring a decent writer, someone who understands character development and getting us to invest in the people we see on screen. Of course, it does not address our existential despair at the futility of life, but sometimes all you need is a big bear.

One warning. I’ve read a couple of critics saying that the trailer is better than the film itself. Well, in a sense, but this is partly because the trailer takes all the best gags and wrenches them out of context. This means that when you see them in the film, you lose any sense of surprize, and what could have been a neat joke which plays on dramatic tension doesn’t work as you know what’s going to happen. Do yourself a favour and try to avoid seeing the trailer before watching the film.

I don’t want to make out that Cocaine Bear is a cinematic masterpiece, but I went into the cinema tonight expecting to be disappointed, I just so wanted a film about a bear on drugs to be good that I’d resigned myself to it not being able to deliver on its promise. So it’s great to say that Cocaine Bear is better than it has any right to be. I don’t think it will reach my films of the year list, but especially given the relative mediocrity that I’ve seen lately, it was an evening enjoyed.