“Cocaine Bear”

DUNCAN’S REEL DEAL

Matt Duncan

Sometimes, with a title, you know exactly what you’re going to get – Wendy’s “Baconator,” for example, or 1980s comics superhero, “Arm-Fall-Off Boy.” In the cinematic realm, you might think, “Snakes on a Plane.”

Or now, “Cocaine Bear.” What you see is what you get. Yes, there’s a bear in this movie. Yes, it does cocaine. A lot of it. Black bears are supposed to be pretty harmless. Unlike brown bears, which will hunt you down and tear you limb from limb, black bears are wusses. The official advice on black bears, if one ever attacks you, is to fight back. Fight back! A bear! I’m pretty sure that’s not the advice on, like, opossums, let alone a 500-pound, muscle-bound beast with claws the size of Bowie knives. I guess black bears are chill. Unless they do cocaine. Then they’ll hunt you down and tear you limb from limb. Evidently.

So, in 1985, when drug smuggler Andrew Thornton (Matthew Rhys) tosses bag after bag of cocaine out of his getaway plane as it crosses over Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia, he really is tempting fate – and the resolve of one unusually large black bear. Just ask European hikers Olaf (Kristofer Hivju) and Elsa (Hannah Hoekstra), who think it’s totally fine and not at all risky to snaps pics of a black bear in the wild. Or ask the two middle-schoolers –Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and Henry (Christian Convery) – playing hooky in the woods. You could likewise ask Dee Dee’s mom, Sari (Keri Russell), as she marches into the forest after her delinquent child.

There are also drug dealers, who are looking for their stash; cops, who are looking for the drug dealers; a band of misfit teens; and Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) and her goofy wildlife expert/romantic interest, Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson).

All of these people become apprised of the bear. They all make the mistake, at some point, of thinking that black bears are no big deal. Of course, they didn’t expect the black bear to be doing cocaine; so, fair enough.

There’s a lot of carnage – bloody carnage, gross carnage, over-the-top carnage, even silly carnage. It’s like one of those gruesome Quentin Tarantino revenge flicks (e.g., “Inglorious Basterds,” “Django Unchained”) except this time it’s the bear getting revenge … for getting gifted a bunch of coke, I guess.

That’s how filmmaker Elizabeth Banks thought of this movie. In an interview, she said she thought the bear deserved a perspective. So, she made one up. Although the movie is “based on a true story,” it’s more like those fantastical Tarantino movies. No drug-addled bear ever killed a bunch of people. Yes, cocaine was dropped into the forest, but all anyone found, bear-wise, was a poor Ursus americanus who OD’d in the woods.

Anyway, Banks thought this bear deserved a voice. I disagree. Or maybe it was Banks’ voice – or cinematic tone – that was off key. Because “Cocaine

Bear” never tickles the ear, so to speak; it never finds an appealing rhythm. It is supposed to be a horror comedy, but it is rarely funny and never really scary.

“Cocaine Bear” is like a Wild Cherry Pepsi (another name that gives the plot away) gone flat. It is supposed to pack a big ol’ punch – whether it’s overcaffeinated, heart-pounding thrills or absurdly sugary laughs. But it doesn’t pop; at most it just kinda fizzles.

It’s boring. How is a movie about a bear, on cocaine, murdering people, boring? Well, get a bunch of people you don’t really care about except for the fact that some of them are decent actors and occasionally one of them does something funny, have them meander pointlessly through the woods gawking at a bear who is about to bite their legs off, and, well, you’ll find it’s a slog.

Unless you plan to watch this movie while using the bear’s product, it’s tough to recommend.

“Cocaine Bear” is rated R for bloody violence and gore, drug content and language throughout.

Matt Duncan, a former Coastal View News editor, has taken physical but not emotional leave from Carpinteria to be a philosophy professor at Rhode Island College. In his free time from philosophizing, Duncan enjoys chasing his kids around, watching movies and updating his movie review blog, duncansreeldeal.blogspot.com.