[star rating=”5″] COCAINE BEAR. Directed by Elizabeth Banks. With Keri Russel, Ray Liotta and Margot Martindale, to name just a few.
MEGAN CHORITZ reviews
Can this reviewer (me) give 5* to a B-grade horror comedy? Yes, ma’am I can. Even though I thought I would hate this movie because of the gratuitous gore, cheesy American stereotypes, and animals in horrible circumstances, I ended up laughing snorting, choking, spitting, squealing, chuckling, giggling, and wheezing into my popcorn over 100 times. This movie is totally implausible, utterly over the top, outrageously difficult to believe and completely, totally hilarious. And I am still thinking about it and laughing days later.
Cocaine Bear is ‘based’ on a true story. Yes, it is true that a bunch of duffel bags of cocaine ended up in the woods after the paranoid drug runner parachuter got scared and tossed them from a plane before injuring himself and failing to open his parachute. Ironically, he would have survived were it not for the heavy duffel bag of cocaine that made his fall too fast for the emergency chute.
Magnificent losers
Yes, a dead bear was found to have eaten four grams of coke from one of the bags. This we know to be true. The movie, however, expostulates very, very broadly on a what if theory and it is total insanity.
The characters in this complete chaos are magnificent losers, all with their particular brand of dysfunction. There’s the dog loving detective Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr), the dementedly camp teenage gangster Kid (Aaron Holliday), the grief-stricken ex gangster Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) and my absolute favourite, Ranger Liz (Margot Martindale). I loved every single performance, including what is usually my worst, the kids.
Then there is the insane, random, genius dialogue. So many hilarious moments and lines. Starting with “We have such good luck in nature” and ending with the line about how Eddie knows it’s a girl bear. The dialogue is hilarious, matching perfectly with the outrageous situation, the unbelievably whacky characters.
Terrifying and still totally hilarious
And then there is the cocaine loving bear. CGI combined with a man in a bear suit makes for a madly realistic, drug addled psycho killer. Terrifying and still totally hilarious.
There’s a lot of blood. Buckets full of it. There’s a lot of torn off limbs, blown or scratched to shreds faces, missing digits (another one of my favourite lines is to do with those missing digits), and lots and lots of killed folks in a variety of gruesome and gory ways. Watch out for my favourite, the ambulance bed.
Do not expect anything except mad, ridiculous hilariousness from this ‘comedy in horror film’ as director Elizabeth Banks puts it.
Apparently, true story, a whole bunch of cocaine was lost at sea this last week. Elizabeth Banks got excited on social media, and we can expect the sequel, Cocaine Shark next. Twitter has been up for it. My fave tweet was:
Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama
“I hope Cocaine Bear starts a franchise. Meth Ferret. LSD Squid. Weed Turkey. I will see every one.”
What: Cocaine Bear
Where: Ster-Kinekor cinemas
WS
