Inspired by the real-life story of a wild bear overdosing on cocaine in September of 1985, today’s film adaptation lived up to that silly premise. Nothing serious, nothing to get super worked up over, just an all-around goofy adventure.
To start things off, the beginning of the movie was the least interesting part of it. The film features a wide variety of characters whos names I can’t remember and they all need to be introduced with their backgrounds and why exactly they’re in the mountains on this fateful day. I do believe that setting up a unique story for each character was important to the execution of the film, however none of them were super deep or complex and I think they would’ve been able to get it over with faster.
The film starts to get exciting once everyone gets within the bear’s vicinity in the mountains. It followed a cycle of events that were either: one, the characters talking about their personal situations together; two, slow, tense scenes where you feel the bear can strike at any moment; and three, face-paced action scenes where the bear is actively hunting the characters. The movie more or less repeats these events during the rest of the movie, and I was invested all the way through.
Oh yeah, there are also some bloody and gore-y scenes sprinkled in too. When the bear attacks someone they really hammer it home, showing limbs being thrown around the area. I never felt like they were overdone in any way, but they kept them unsettling enough to retain the shock value.
As for the plot of the movie, it wasn’t anything special. Just some run-of-the-mill themes of family and who matters to you or whatever. Honestly, the whole appeal of the movie for me was the absurdity of it all. It takes itself so seriously that all you can do is laugh at its stupidity. Like how one of the main dramatic moments at the end of the film is how the bear dies and is brought back to life with the power of cocaine is so dumb yet entertaining. Cocaine Bear is an engrossing movie where going into it with a dumb mindset will bring you much joy at its dumb story.
Journalism 2.0 