COCAINE BEAR

While allegedly based on real-life events, this movie is silly and disjointed, earning 0 stars from our critic.

RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 35 minutes

RATING: 0 stars

BY REX REED THE NORTH SHORE WEEKEND

A stupid waste of time called Cocaine Bear claims to be inspired by true events, but I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to. This hokum hopes to capture the attention of moviegoers who will sit through anything as long as the projector keeps running, but “inspired” is not the word I would use to describe it.

Apparently there was an incident in 1985 when a drug dealer crashed a private plane somewhere near Knoxville, Tennessee, scores of bags containing cocaine worth millions of dollars piled out of the wreckage and got eaten by a black bear that flew through the forest like a hairy helicopter.

Fact or fiction, an actress turned wanna-be director, Elizabeth Banks, and a second-rate hack screenwriter, Jimmy Warden, have turned that less-than-historic event into a movie destined to fill the lower half of a double bill on cable TV—hoping for what Variety calls box-office boffo. The way things are going at the movies, it might be a hit in the making, but without the help of anyone with an I.Q. above 50.

In this fictional re-telling, the plane crashes in the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia. Numerous bags of white powder are scattered under trees, hanging from branches, floating in the river, and covering the floors of wooden ranger stations. A black bear comes along and eats it. He wants more. There isn’t much action, which is a shame, because the only times the movie comes to life is when the bear is eating people.

On a coke-fueled rampage, it attacks game wardens, innocent children, horrified tourists, and a gang of coke dealers too greedy and moronic to leave what’s left behind. Mostly it climbs trees, sniffing out everyone with cocaine on their arms and knees. mong the victims are Margo Martindale, the excellent character actress, reduced to the status of a buffoon as a forest ranger cussing out teenagers, criminals and the bear, which she blames for holding back her career (“Without you, I’d be in Yellowstone by now!”

This mess isn’t intentionally funny. It’s just silly and disjointed and woefully misguided. Nevertheless, it’s so bad it reaches near-farcical status. I mean, when the bear lands on top of one victim, he finally informs the audience of the creature’s gender.

“It’s a female!” he shouts as the bear chews his fingers off. “How do you know?” “Because her vagina is in my ear.”

The jokes seem to be misfiring.

In the sparsely attended cinema where I watched this fiasco (I counted ten ticket buyers, including myself), a few sadists groaned, but nobody laughed.

The saddest thing about Cocaine Bear is the fact that it is one of the final onscreen appearances by the popular, recently deceased Ray Liotta. He deserves better, but so does the audience.