Cocaine Bear

One fate­ful day in 1985, a black bear in the Amer­i­can state of Geor­gia ingest­ed a duf­fel bag full of cocaine that had been thrown out of a plane by drug smug­gler Andrew Thorn­ton, dis­card­ed before he fell to his death. The inquis­i­tive bear prompt­ly expired, like­ly in agony, and its taxi­der­mied body is now on dis­play in Lex­ing­ton, Ken­tucky. For his screen­writ­ing debut, Jim­my Warden’s Cocaine Bear draws from this bizarre true sto­ry, but because that ver­sion would make for a gen­uine­ly hor­ri­ble and fair­ly bor­ing view­ing expe­ri­ence, War­den and direc­tor Eliz­a­beth Banks have instead made their coked-up CGI ver­sion of the 80s bear go on a mur­der­ous ram­page as she search­es for more cocaine to consume.

Cocaine Bear gave itself a lot to live up to. The trail­er tru­ly promised a film for our times – a rav­en­ous bear high out of her skull, light­ly anthro­po­mor­phised by virtue of her new­found drug habit, leap­ing into a mov­ing ambu­lance and doing a line off a sev­ered leg. With the cur­rent hor­rorscape trag­i­cal­ly devoid of the likes of Snakes on a Plane (2006) or Slugs (1988), audi­ences yearn for the earnest­ly ridicu­lous. A bear that did cocaine is a sto­ry as pure and meme­able as say, 30 – 50 fer­al hogs.

Cocaine Bear would be flirt­ing with dis­as­ter if it leaned too heav­i­ly on any­thing oth­er than the tit­u­lar twat­ted ursus amer­i­canus. Its suc­cinct premise couldn’t work if the film itself was too clever, too know­ing, too slap­stick, or if it tried to make a seri­ous eth­i­cal point about any­thing at all. For­tu­nate­ly Cocaine Bear attempts none of these things. The major­i­ty of the dia­logue is con­cerned with the fact that ​“The bear, it f*cking did cocaine!”

There is no attempt made to moralise about man encroach­ing on nature, or on the ethics of the inter­na­tion­al drugs trade. There are, as promised, truck­loads of coke-dust­ed sev­ered limbs – and a few entrails thrown in for good mea­sure. Yet Cocaine Bear is also played fair­ly straight, with no wink­ing at the cam­era or excru­ci­at­ing­ly self-aware antics as one might fear in a hor­ror com­e­dy, man­ag­ing to main­tain a tongue-in-cheek tone that isn’t too overt. The CGI, how­ev­er, is a lit­tle more test­ing – you real­ly must sus­pend your dis­be­lief, for if there is even a tiny chink in the dou­ble-think required to believe in this keyed-up bear, your enjoy­ment of the film is screwed.

But if you can believe in her, you’ll root for Cocaine Bear, as well as the eclec­tic cast of humans she’s pur­su­ing. Among them are two feisty bear-defy­ing chil­dren – one of whom is Hen­ry, played by the excel­lent Chris­t­ian Con­very, who dress­es like a tiny dooms­day prep­per and real­ly loves say­ing ​“f*ck”. Try­ing to retrieve the cocaine are sweet, recent­ly bereaved Eddie (Alden Ehren­re­ich) and exas­per­at­ed Dav­eed (O’Shea Jack­son Jr) who fum­ble their way through their mis­sion, in a man­ner that is saved from becom­ing grat­ing once Eddie’s drug lord dad Syd (played by Ray Liot­ta in his final role before his untime­ly death) arrives to coun­ter­bal­ance their car­toon­ish­ness by being ade­quate­ly gnarly.

Such a glow­ing appraisal will inevitably be met with the ques­tion ​“Yes, but how can it actu­al­ly be good?” The thing is, Cocaine Bear tran­scends terms such as ​‘good’ and instant­ly enters the realm of ​‘beloved trash’. It will be viewed at teen sleep­overs, as a roman­tic ice­break­er, and when no one can decide what to watch for decades to come – the sort of uncom­pli­cat­ed, sil­ly, sur­re­al view­ing expe­ri­ence that might not change your life, but will cer­tain­ly enrich it.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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