Elizabeth Banks’ “Cocaine Bear”: a pitch perfect camp comedy (sorry, not sorry)

The argument that women couldn’t play in the same genres typically relegated to male directors should have been settled a century ago. We can go all the way back to Lois Weber and Mabel Normand in the silent era to find women directors capable of delivering solid fare. Sadly, owing to the marginalization of women producers and female-led production companies, from 1927 to 1943, there was only one woman director working in Hollywood, Dorothy Arzner. 

Slowly, change would come. Ida Lupino went from being an actress of considerable talent to a formidable director with “The Hitch-Hiker” being the first film noir directed by a woman and several other works that tackled a variety of issues. She opened doors for women directors in Hollywood and beginning in the late 1960s/early 1970s, the field opened to include more women’s voices.

I could go down a list from Shirley Clarke to Elaine May to Martha Coolidge, but I don’t think we hit another Ida Lupino level genre director until Kathryn Bigelow. I don’t want to quite harp too much on the “genre” part of all this, but I am leading up to someone whose work I’ve admired as a comic actress more than as a director, but props to to Elizabeth Banks for joining the ranks of the likes of Xan Cassavettes, Nia DaCosta, Jennifer Kent, and the Soska twins. Banks’ “Cocaine Bear” may not be straight up horror since its leavened with often dark comedy and a self-awareness that puts it not so far afield from Wes Craven’s “Scream” and its sequels.

But Banks also brings to mind, quite palpably, David Wain’s “Wet Hot American Summer”, an ode to the 80s summer camp sex comedies, though “Cocaine Bear” never quite gets us to the sex part. 

What it does do is provide a fleet tale where all context and subtext is found in the title itself. Cocaine. Bear. Put the two together in a Reese’s Pieces of camp, violence, and sometimes guffaw worthy hilarity, and you have a nifty hour and a half of carnage laden comedy to pass the time with.

I found it telling that Banks didn’t feel a need to hammer home allusions or call-backs to other films. She knows the formulae for the “lost in the woods” horror tropes and she has a cast that commits to the premise, as ridiculous as it may be. There is self-awareness throughout, but it’s at a remove from the performances, so those can breathe. I’m thinking somewhat along the lines of Kusuma’s “Jennifer’s Body” but not as deep or satiric. Banks is in full-on fun mode and at its best, it is great fun, indeed.

Based (extremely loosely) on an actual event where a duffle bag of cocaine, jettisoned from a plane over northern Georgia, was consumed by a 175 pound black bear in 1985. The bear died surrounded by 40 opened plastic bags of coke. 

In the film, the bear gets gacked out of her mind and goes on a killing spree of substantial proportions and we are all just along for the ride. The drivers of the film are Keri Russell’s Sari, a nurse who goes after her daughter Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince who won me over as Moonee in “The Florida Project”) playing hooky with her best pal Henry. Beyond that are the gangsters who have been sent by their boss to retrieve the contraband, three teens who run afoul of said gangsters, park ranger Liz (a terrific Margo Martindale - along with Russell and as drug runner Thornton, Matthew Rhys, we have a small “The Americans” reunion going on) and her swain, a park guide (“Modern Family”’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson), the detective who is on his way to capture the crime boss he’s been looking to lock up for years, and a couple of EMTs. Oh, and a lovely couple from Switzerland.

It’s not a spoiler to say that most of these people wind up as snacks for our budding ursine cocaine addict. 

Not everyone, though. Beth, one of the EMTs dies from running into a tree, Bob, the detective gets shot. Liz, the park ranger, accidentally kills one of the teens (the Duchamps…bad seeds, I tell ya; those kids are always up to no good.) Liz herself is mauled by the bear but meets St. Peter after rolling out of the ambulance and onto the highway. So it’s not all on the bear, is what I’m saying.

There are back stories for everyone and each is given just enough to set up motivations and situations. The guys sent to retrieve the coke work for Ray Liotta’s Syd (who, of course, is just note perfect in his last completed role) and it happens that one is his son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich, the other Han Solo) who just wants to get out of the family business after losing his wife and who has abandoned his own son. Detective Bob (Isaiah Whitlock, Jr.) puts two and two together and heads for Georgia to retrieve the cocaine in the hope that Syd is also on his way there. The rest you can figure out, I’m pretty sure. If you want. 

Frankly, I’d pop some popcorn and hunker down to one of the more pleasantly goofy movies I’ve seen in a while. Sometimes, there is great satisfaction in knowing precisely what you’re getting and if you’re in the mood and understand the tropes, this only adds to it.

Banks produced all three “Pitch Perfect” films and directed the second. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s difficult to deny her grasp of directing. “Cocaine Bear” is a work from a director who understands the material to a tee and delivers accordingly.

Apparently, there was a slew of viral marketing on the interwebz for “Cocaine Bear” with an eye to pushing it similar to “Snakes on a Plane”. Essentially, the studio went out of its way to force this little treat down people’s throats as a cult film or better yet, a Cult Film. I knew nothing about that (look, I didn’t even know “The Blair Witch Project” had been marketed online until long after I’d seen the film); I saw the previews in the cinema and rather made up my mind that Elizabeth Banks made a movie for me.

The film has taken some knocks for unconvincing CGI on the bear. Well, there’s a good reason for that: this isn’t “The Revenant”. The bear shouldn’t be too convincing (and for the most part is convincing enough; the rendering is pretty tight even if there are a couple of scenes where she’s more shadow than mass); the film is a horror comedy and the emphasis falls on the latter. 

Oh, how do we know Cocaine Bear is a she? There is a scene that might be a callback/shout out to “The Revenant” (speak of the devil) but with a definite twist. Nothing graphic, but pretty amusing. 

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