Paw and disorder
Four years after her enjoyable Charlie’s Angels reboot flopped at the box office, plucky actress-turned-director Elizabeth Banks is back with an even riskier project.
Cocaine Bear is a horror comedy. And for every classic like An American Werewolf In London, there are 20 stinkers like Strippers vs Werewolves.
Banks doesn’t always hit the right blend of laughs and gore but I did snort (with laughter) two or three times.
By my maths, that makes it two or three times funnier than Strippers vs Werewolves.
According to the poster, this tale is based on “true events”.
In 1985, the body of a drug smuggler (briefly played by Matthew Rhys) was found in a driveway after he leapt from a failing plane with 35kg of cocaine strapped to his body.
On his way, he dumped 40 bags full of coke in a national park in Georgia, one of which a black bear stumbled upon and ingested before dropping dead and living a second life as a stuffed tourist attraction.
Here, the bear not only survives but goes on a drug-fuelled killing spree.
His potential victims include a park ranger (Margo Martindale), a pair of truant school kids (Brooklynn Prince and
Christian Convery), a worried mum (Keri Russell) and a cop (Isiah Whitlock Jr).
Then there are three members of a drug gang (Ray Liotta, Alden Ehrenreich, O’shea Jackson Jr) who embark on an action-packed hunt for their missing wares.
That’s a lot of characters and Banks doesn’t give us a reason to care about any of them. An unhinged sequence involving the bear chasing an ambulance is probably worth the ticket price alone. But, too often, Banks tries too hard to shock when she could be crafting sharp lines and smart visual gags.
Like many human adherents of the white powder, this ursine addict can be a bit of a bore.
‘‘ The bear not only survives the cocaine but goes on a drug-fuelled killing spree