My Review of "Cocaine Bear"

Cocaine Bear is a very odd comedy that just recently came out in 2023. It sounds bonkers and the trailer made it seem just as crazy. That's obviously the reason why I had to check it out during opening weekend at the theaters. What I got wasn't totally unexpected but there were some elements that really didn't need to be added.

We start this movie off with a pretty comical scene. A person that is obviously on drugs is kicking some packages off of a plane. It's safe to presume that they're bags of cocaine. There is a little mishap where this person doesn't exactly get off the plane the best possible way and this is the reason why there's cocaine in the forest.

From there we start getting introduced to a plethora of characters. Each of them will be interacting with the infamous cocaine bear at some point. We just don't realize how this cocaine bear will find them and maul them to death.

We get a European couple that are exploring the forest before they plan on growing their family. Then we have a single mother family where the daughter is trying to find danger in all the wrong places. They also introduce us to a park ranger who is trying to woo one of her colleagues. There's adolescents constantly trying to commit petty crimes in the forest. We also have a cop who's trying to take down drug crimes. Then of course we have the drug dealers that are associated to the screw up of the man in the plane from the first scene.

That's a ton of characters to work with and I think this could have been trimmed up a lot so that we could build time to develop the remaining characters. This first portion of the movie was a little too much explanation of who is part of the story. Granted each of the characters have a good chunk of time throughout the movie to breathe a little but there was just too many. I found it took too much time away from the fun that we're supposed to be having about a bear addicted to cocaine.

When we finally get to see this cocaine bear it is a pretty fun time. There are some moments where they do a good time in building the tension of what is going to happen to the characters. There is a lot of fun to be had when the bear finally attacks some of our characters. Some scenes are quite gruesome and that's part of the fun of watching it in the theaters. You get to hear the collective groans and yikes.

The problem with watching it in the theaters is that you also hear the dead silence when the movie is supposed to be funny too. There are a lot of jokes that just fell flat and it was probably one of the quietest comedies I've ever heard in the movie theater. It's too bad too because there was so much potential with this movie.

I think this was partially to a fault that they tried to emphasize that this story was based off of a true story. They may have held back on becoming too over the top. That's what I was hoping this movie would become. i thought that this would focus more on the bear and make this more of a Sharknado movie than a hybrid between a regular comedy and over the top lampoon.

Overall, I had an okay time. There are some scenes that helped me enjoy this movie for what it was but ultimately there was too much expedition on characters that they shouldn't have been in the movie in the first place. That's why I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. It's not a movie that I would go back to but I had fun watching with friends.