Cocaine Bear movie review: Savagely funny, this black comedy will leave you with a high

Cocaine Bear movie review: In 1985, in Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia, a small plane with a lot of cocaine on board dumped its payload and crashed. The pilot, a low-level drug dealer, had attempted to parachute down but it didn't work and he fell to his death. An American Black Bear was found dead near the wreckage. Apparently, the 175-pound animal had eaten 75 pounds of the stuff.

Dubbed the Cocaine Bear or, more amusingly, Pablo Eskobear, the bear became a legend and was taxidermised. Cocaine Bear, the movie, is said to be based on that incident, which is Hollywoodspeak for 'taking an interesting real incident and running with it'.

Here, the bear is a 500-pound fiend. Oh, and it does not die from cocaine. Instead, from a shy, gentle giant it turns into a mindless rage monster junkie hankering after that one last high like Jesse Pinkman. And that is the movie, really. Nothing more, nothing less. A coke-addled bear begins killing people in gruesome and, admittedly, increasingly hilarious ways. A single conceit stretched to its extremes. It's insane, it's unbelievable, and it's undeniably fun.

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There are, of course, human characters here too. Monster movies need characters that we know at least a little so their death will be slightly affecting.

The cast is talented, but the bear is the main star

Keri Russell is a nurse called Sari and a mother whose little daughter plays truant with and escapes on the same day the bear is wreaking havoc in the area. Alden Ehrenreich's Eddie Dentwood is an alcoholic suffering from depression of losing his wife to cancer. He and Henry (Christian Convery) are tasked with retrieving the cocaine by former's drug kingpin father Syd, played by late legend Ray Liotta. Isiah Whitlock Jr essays Bob, a detective who is on the trail of Syd.

Margo Martindale has a nice cameo as a rotund forest ranger who is in love with an animal rights activist and a regular visitor to the park Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). Two emergency medics, played by Kahyun Kim and Scott Seiss, also get themselves entangled with the animal.

These and more characters find themselves in the general area where the coke-addled bear is let loose.

Cocaine Bear is endlessly fun

Directed by Elizabeth Banks and scripted by Jimmy Warden, Cocaine Bear watches like studio execs one day had a get-together and decided to make a movie that'll make Kshitij happy. I've been a fan of such beast-goes-on-rampage ever since I can remember, and this one fits the bill. I was in love with the movie was even before I saw the madcap trailer. I remember thinking, if the movie is remotely like the promos, I'll be a happy man.

And the movie is indeed exactly what the trailer promises. Right from the beginning, when a couple hiking through the woods spot the bear and realise, too late, that something is not quite right with it, the film sets a darkly funny flavour as the slavering, crazy ursid uses its scalpel-like claws and canines to make short work of whatever human interference it encounters in its quest to gobble the million dollars worth substance.

Even as the bear rumbles, tumbles, falls asleep, and wakes up to resume its ceaseless and uncontrollable hunt for coke and characters are slashed, clawed, crushed, split open, dismembered, disembowelled, and — in one case — decapitated, the tone remains consistently cheeky. And yes, this dark brand of humour might not be to everyone's taste (that explains the empty theatre, sigh). Watching humans, ranging from perfectly decent to downright repulsive, die in such a variety of gut-churning ways shouldn't be this funny, ideally. But it is.

You can guess from the cast list as to which of them is going to survive this ordeal. Frankly, there is not much acting involved here. It's mostly loud yells of "Run!" and wide eyes. Though the talented actors do their best, it would not have changed much if the cast was populated by unknown names. Well, except for the box office appeal. But not in India, it seems. As I said, I was alone in the theatre. Usually, that is a buzzkill, for I wish my movie-viewing to be a collective experience filled with laughs and hoots and cheers. But with Cocaine Bear, I was having too much funto notice.

Cocaine Bear can make no claims to highbrow cinema, but it is a fun time at the movies.

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