"Cocaine Bear" begins with a pretty gonzo opening sequence showing how Andrew C. Thornton II (a terrific cameo from Matthew Rhys) fell from a plane over Kentucky while smuggling kilos of cocaine. From there the film immediately focuses on a dual-pronged process of establishing tone and building its ensemble cast.
For the former, Banks employs humorous "just say no" ads from the Nancy Reagan era of the war on drugs, tethered to period-appropriate needle drops, casual anachronistic in-jokes, and generally creating an aesthetic somewhere between overlong Funny or Die videos and earnest, VHS-era camp-bound slasher fare. The viewer needs to know they are watching a movie that, at least at the outset, doesn't take itself particularly seriously.
But with the latter, the film must introduce a sprawling, interconnected cast each with their own subplots converging in the park in Chattanooga where the Cocaine Bear resides. Sari (Keri Russell) is a single mother and a nurse whose daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and her friend Henry (Christian Convery) skip school and get lost in the park, so she has to go looking for them. Syd (Ray Liotta in one of his last on-screen roles), is a drug kingpin who needs to retrieve the missing cocaine, so he sends Daveed (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) and his own son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), a grieving widower who wants out of the drug business, to go looking for it. There's also Margot Martindale as a thirsty park ranger, Isiah Whitlock Jr. as a detective, and a gang known only as the Duchamp Boys, all circling around this ridiculous nexus of circumstance and absurdity.
It's a lot of set-up for punchlines that don't always land. Though ostensibly a comedy, the actual jokes and humor are of such a niche variety that they often just feel like throwaway asides and the sort of hyper-specific background bits that exist solely to pop the comedy writers who come up with them. Also, the time it takes to effectively weave this intricate web of supporting players makes the short 95-minute runtime feel longer than it ought to.
Against all odds, however, it's worth it for the middle section where there's enough red meat in the room to unleash the Cocaine Bear and the credulity-stretching misdirections and farcical contrivances her very presence inspires. It's here that Banks comes alive, channeling her inner Sam Raimi to transcend some of the try-hard theatrics of the comedy at play to indulge in the film's horrific monster movie aspect. Even though the real bear the film is based on just got high, overdosed, and died, the creatives behind the film and the audience in their seats are coming together because they want to see a bear, under the influence of narcotics, wreak bloody havoc.
When the film gets into that monster movie groove and the Cocaine Bear goes full throttle, it's a genuine blast. "Cocaine Bear," at its best is the kind of popcorn diversion the theatrical marketplace needs a lot more of. Too bad it's not always at its best.
