Cocaine Bear (2023)
5/10
Funny collection of individual scenes that don't connect
22 March 2023
The central idea is funny enough, as are the ensuing first and second act antics, however, you can really tell this idea wasn't workshopped well enough before they decided it was worth shooting because all it comes out as is a collection of humorous scenes with a coked out bear going on a rampage and all of its various half-baked plot threads occurring around the coked out bear rampage just abruptly end without any sense of climax, or any resolution at all as far as the bear itself and its crack babies go. There are numerous immensely enjoyable individual scenes, like the first responders attempting to escape cocaine bear's hot pursuit, or two twelve year old's attempting to eat an entire tablespoon of cocaine, or cocaine bear snorting an entire kilo right before attempting to hump a drug dealer as its coke-induced libido shoots through the roof, and then there's two cocaine cubs introduced right at the third act which serve to be a part of a few humorous punchlines, but then they don't ever actually get to affect the plot in any way right before the movie just ends.

It's fine if the movie doesn't have any interest in establishing any real character work and simply wants to have itself a bunch of cardboard cutouts to pump up cocaine bear's body count, however, the movie puts quite a bit of work into establishing its characters, their personalities, and their motivations. We've got two school kids playing hookey to go on a hike and paint a waterfall, an incompetent park ranger attempting to track down a gang of teenagers mugging people on state property, an entire plotline revolving around some drug dealers attempting to repossess their cocaine supply from cocaine bear, a police detective investigating a drug cartel, an entire subplot that revolves around a junior detective betraying her superior as it's revealed she's working with the cartel, and half a dozen other contrivances meant to bring people into this park, and none of it comes together, resolves, or serves any purpose other than to get bodies into the state park. So if all they wanted was a body count, they could have much more easily kept the beginning scene with the coked out cartel pilot dropping his payloads into the park right before crashing his plane to set up the central gimmick, then just had a park tour bus full of internationals come in to give the bear a crowd of 40+ people for cocaine bear to go ham on, and then we'd get to watch the state park staff and locals deal with the ensuing carnage in various humorous ways, all while saving a lot of screen time on setup for all the other subplots that go nowhere, and we still get a massive body count without feeling like we've been robbed of any kind of payoff after getting invested in the various different plotlines coming together in any meaningful way.

So if all you want is a moderately funny movie about a bear on a cocaine induced rampage, you'll get exactly that and most likely be satisfied so long as you're capable of ignoring every other ultimately pointless plot thread.
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