Joining such celebrated cinematic bruins as Winnie The Pooh, Ted and Paddington, comes COCAINE BEAR, a rollicking outdoorser that’s a doozey.
Hilarity and horror hurl out of hibernation with this nifty ninety minuter about a cocaine fuelled critter causing hilarious havoc in a national park.
Picture starts with a literally and metaphorically high as a kite scene that is packed with pitch perfect comedy. A ship load of blow is jettisoned from an aircraft only to land in a forested area of the United States.
For those who go into the woods that day, they’re sure of a big surprise.
These include a single mum searching the woods for her lost daughter and the girl’s smitten friend, a forest ranger trying to capture the heart of a PETA inspector, a pair of criminals trying to repair their friendship after a tragic loss, a detective with an emotionally ambiguous relationship with a Maltese terrier, some Norwegian hikers, some brave paramedics, a gang of artsy-fartsy punks with a hard-on for 20th century French conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp and a drug king pin wanting his merchandise back.
With salutes to Spielberg and a tip of the cap to the Cohens, director Elizabeth Banks presents us with a heady bear’s picnic of a picture, where there’s enough snow to make brown bears polar and blood and dismemberment to make Sam Raimi proud.
Apex predators on the rampage have seldom been more fun or silliness more savoured. There’s an unpredictability in the predictability, a joy in the slightly skewed tropes.
The adults are great, the kids are great, and the bear and its cubs superb, thanks to the crew at Weta.
COCAINE BEAR is wild and liberated, a riotous, rambunctious, entertainment that revels in its bear faced irreverence.
