First Take: Cocaine Bear - definitely not a vision or a dream of passion

SYNOPSIS: An oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converge on a Georgia forest where a huge black bear goes on a murderous rampage after unintentionally ingesting cocaine.

It isn’t often when you see a title of a film so bonkers that it literally has to be seen to be believed- but with the production might of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller behind it, a movie inspired by the American black bear so infamous it was nicknamed ‘Pablo Escobear’, you kind of know what you’re gonna be letting yourself in for.

Elizabeth Banks of Pitch Perfect fame takes up the directors chair for only the third time in her career (Pitch Perfect 2 and the critically mauled 2019 reboot of Charlie’s Angels being her first two features), and she does an OK job of making this film work - at 1 hour 35 minutes, it feels like the right runtime, but the style of it is a bit tricky to get used to at first. And while Jimmy Warden’s script takes some significant liberties from the true story which inspired it (yes, a bear really did do cocaine in 1985), it ultimately passes the 6 laugh test and earns the 15 certificate with ease, even though the plot is half baked. It’s shot well by John Guleserian, and Mark Mothersbaugh is arguably the ideal choice to score a film as crazy as this - after all, his music with Devo was quite big during the era this film plays out in.

The cast is lead admirably by Keri Russell, with Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson Jr, Christian Convery, Jessie Tyler Ferguson, Isiah Whitelock Jr and Margo Martindale rounding out the on-screen talent alongside standout young talent Brooklynn Prince- but what will ultimately keep this film relevant is the fact that it is Ray Liotta’s final big screen performance before his death last May. This is a decent enough cast, who do a fine job with the script that’s been presented to them, but whether it needed to be a full blown feature film is something I’m struggling to figure out. It has made its money back over in the States, here in the UK it has opened in between Ant-Man and Creed, arguably a death slot for any Hollywood comedy, but it has found its audience - and fair play to Universal for taking the risk. We need more comedy on the big screen, but ideally more original stuff.

THE VERDICT

Cocaine Bear is a decent enough comedy - one which doesn’t take itself seriously, and while its plot leaves a lot to be desired for UK audiences as is the case with most of these ‘inspired by a true story’ films that are played for laughs, it still has enough humour to (just about) make 1 hour 35 minutes feel tolerable.

RATING: 3/5