Cocaine Bear — Review Thread

When I first heard the title “Cocaine Bear” I assumed it was going to be some Sharknado-esque direct-to-video movie, but then to my surprise I saw trailers for it in front of “real” movies and learned that it actually came from a notable director and had a somewhat recognizable cast. Still, it was a movie about a rampage by a black bear that had snorted a bunch of cocaine that was accidentally dropped into the woods by traffickers… that’s kind of stupid. Having now watched it, well you know that clip from “Arrested Development” where the Jason Bateman character opens a bag he finds in a refrigerator labeled “dead dove – do not eat,” opens it and looks inside only to find that it is indeed a dead dove’s corpse and then says to himself “well, I don’t know what I expected.” The movie is pretty dumb. As a pure creature feature it’s mediocre at best and the bear isn’t very scary or cool looking. It’s also kind of supposed to be a comedy, but it’s not a very funny one. There’s supposed to be some sort of social commentary about the demonization of drug use in the “just say no” era, but whatever satirical point it’s trying to make about that doesn’t really land particularly well. I’m really not sure why semi-prominent actress/filmmaker Elizabeth Banks thought that making this was ever going to be a good career move as this was only ever going to get gawking interest at best. It’s not the worst movie you’re likely to see, there is a sort of absurdist energy to certain scenes and it is an improvement over actual direct-to-video creature films