‘Cocaine Bear’ is a fun diversion at best

In an age where anything that isn’t a Marvel movie must fight for elbow room at the local multiplex, perhaps it’s inevitable that any inkling of originality in cinema would come courtesy of the kind of memeable audacity that conspired to produce “Cocaine Bear.” 

The newly forged memeable movie genre, built on the backs of old recognizable genres and spiced up with a requisite “I-can’t-believe-they-actually-made-that-into-a-movie” twist, seems to be an unavoidable phenomenon in the age of social media. Recent entries into this canon include “Violent Night,” “M3GAN” and “80 for Brady,” all of which built their marketing campaigns on sheer attention-grabbing audacity, despite all being fairly traditional genre exercises at their core. 

It seems that this trend has inevitably culminated into a movie that begs so much for attention that its title is literally “Cocaine Bear,” something it could never possibly live up to, however hard it may try. The genius of this title is both its audacity and its simplicity, both of which the actual film could stand to use a little more of.

The film opens with a drug smuggler dumping a cocaine shipment from a plane into the northern Georgia wilderness, and then falling to his death before he can escape with his own stash. This creates a problem for the local authorities, as well as the drug kingpin and his goons, who converge upon the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest to address the situation. It also creates a problem for anyone else who happens to be visiting the forest at this time because, as the title has made very clear, none of them will be getting that cocaine. 

It is instead the titular bear that stumbles upon the drugs, develops an unhealthy addiction and becomes yet another hapless victim of substance abuse. A touching and cautionary tale indeed, but for the vicious killing spree the bear wages upon the masses for the remainder of the film. This is all reportedly based on a true story, although one might assume that certain liberties were taken. 

Unfortunately, the film spends far too much time on its human characters, of which there are far too many. The film is always tracking around six or seven different storylines, which often overlap or converge but never simplify or condense. The various characters get entire storylines devoted to them, but the audience never really cares or even learns much about any of them. There is no cohesive narrative that sweeps us through the various plotlines, just a bunch of disjointed story beats that all feel like they’re out of different movies, united only by the eponymous bear. 

Cocaine Bear herself, as she is so addressed, is far and away the best character — this is a creature feature where the creature actually has a personality. There is a real feeling of meanness that comes across as she mutilates her helpless victims, and she has an uncommon sense of purpose and drive. Naturally, her main purpose is getting another hit of cocaine, which she spends most of the runtime trying to do when she isn’t busy maiming and disfiguring the human characters. At the same time, though, she is just a mother trying to protect her cubs — a poignant touch, indeed.

The film is at its best when it allows her to shine, and the bear attack sequences are the obvious highlights of the movie. Even here, though, there is a feeling that the film is afraid of itself, and with few exceptions is hesitant to indulge in either the zaniness its premise should inspire, or the graphic violence any self-respecting gorehound would expect. The sequences settle for an unfortunate middleground, where they would have been better served to be either scarier, funnier or crazier, but in trying to be a little bit of everything, are only pleasantly diverting. 

In between the film’s signature bear sequences are some hit-or-miss attempts at quirky character comedy, some of which are amusing and others that feel bizarrely out of place. To the film’s credit, it is never boring, but it also doesn’t include anything crazier than its now infamous trailers have already teased. It lacks focus, which perhaps makes it emblematic of the film’s title, but also lacks energy, an area where it could have taken a few notes from its title character. 

While the film fails to match its title’s audacity, it at least never betrays its title’s accuracy. It’s certainly preferable to the monotonous sludge of an “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” because it at least feels different, an increasingly refreshing and rare commodity at the multiplex. If “Cocaine Bear” is the future of originality in cinema — or rather, the future of cinema itself — then, at the very least, it will be fun while it lasts.