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What critics think of ‘Cocaine Bear’
The reviews (both good and bad) of Pittsfield native Elizabeth Banks' black comedy.
Is it better when a B-movie knows it’s a B-movie, or is it more enjoyable to laugh at a film that earnestly tries and fails? “Cocaine Bear,” the new black comedy directed by Pittsfield native Elizabeth Banks (“Pitch Perfect”) is definitely in the former camp, but critics seem unsure as to whether that’s a good thing.
Banks has taken the true story of a bear that ingested a bunch of cocaine in the woods of Kentucky in the 1980s and imagined a scenario in which the bear, instead of dying, went on a coke-fueled rampage. Among the many talented actors who enter the strung-out bear’s orbit are Keri Russell (“The Americans”), Alden Ehrenreich (“Solo: A Star Wars Story”), Margo Martindale (“Justified”), and the late Ray Liotta, playing a menacing drug dealer in his final on-screen role.
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Early critical response to the film has been divisive. So far, review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes has awarded “Cocaine Bear” a 69 percent freshness rating at the time of this article’s publication.
That said, a single number can’t adequately capture the range of critical responses, and many of the reviews coded as “fresh” or “rotten” by the critical aggregation site have a bit more nuance. Some critics loved “Cocaine Bear,” while a handful absolutely hated it. (More on that below.)
To help you judge whether to rush to theaters this weekend or stay home and stream something else, here’s what some of the top film critics are saying, both good and bad, about “Cocaine Bear.”
The Good
Venessa Wong of Buzzfeed loved “Cocaine Bear,” writing that the excessively gory film “thrives on absurdity.”
Cocaine Bear is much like its trailer advertises: a fast-paced, ridiculous, excessively gory comedy-thriller based very loosely on real events that feels like a much-needed shot of adrenaline. It’s too campy and self-deprecating to be an indelible work of cinema, but that’s not the point: It’s original, and it’s a very good time.
RogerEbert.com’s Christy Lemire somewhat hyperbolically suggested that “Cocaine Bear” will “save cinema,” and that the film “knows exactly what it is and what it needs to do.”
[Cocaine Bear] is an incredible blast, especially if you have the benefit of seeing director Elizabeth Banks’ insanely violent comedy/thriller with a packed crowd. The communal experience is essential here. “Cocaine Bear” will bring people together. “Cocaine Bear” will save cinema.
In his review for The Boston Globe, Odie Henderson cut to the chase: “Say no to drugs. Say yes to “Cocaine Bear.”
This is nasty, sleazy fun that not only takes the time for us to get to know its characters, but showcases that even in an environment populated by a coked up, man-eating bear, man is still the most dangerous animal.
The So-So
Charlotte O’Sullivan of the London Evening Standard found the first half of “Cocaine Bear” to be a bore, but was on board for the finale.
While watching Cocaine Bear, you can actually feel your IQ level tumbling. Yep, it was right up my alley. I yawned through the first act, but spent the next hour either gasping or giggling.
Former Boston Globe critic Ty Burr wrote on his Substack that “Cocaine Bear” is exactly what you might expect, and nothing more.
The trick with this kind of “Hey, look, we’re making a crappy movie” movie – as it was with such cultural landmarks as “Snakes on a Plane” and “Sharknado” – lies in locating the line between wink-wink smugness and Just Plain Dumb, and while “Cocaine Bear” mostly succeeds at the task, it’s still low-end comedy-horror schlock, no more and no less.
The Ugly
Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press gave “Cocaine Bear” zero stars (out of four), succinctly writing, “the movie blows.”
We have officially sunk very low with “Cocaine Bear,” way past other films where the title alone describes the only thing that happens, like “Snakes on a Plane,” “We Bought a Zoo” or “Sharknado.” Aping other genres of filmmaking, this one never finds its own voice or a way to integrate the ultra-violence with the dark comedy. It’s like a parody of a parody that director Elizabeth Banks has turned limp and pointless.
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle criticized Banks for trying to make a movie that is “so bad that it’s good” and instead producing one that is “so bad that it’s bad.”
It’s an awful movie, but it doesn’t try to be much better than awful. The ambition here seems to have been to make a fun, gory comedy about a stoned bear going around killing people. But the result is a boring, gory comedy about a stoned bear going around killing people. To its credit, it’s only 95 minutes. To its discredit, it’s longer than five minutes.
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