A Screening of Cocaine Bear at Alamo Drafthouse!

 

On Sunday, February 26th, my wife indulged my fondest wish for the beginning of the moviegoing year.  We went to see the much ballyhooed Cocaine Bear.

Now I have seen two films this year prior to Cocaine Bear.  There was the three hour epic Avatar: The Way of Water.  I went into the theater for that film with great trepidation.  I had had my fill of three hour epics since Avengers: End Game and wanted no more of it.  However, I had been surprised by how well James Cameron mapped out the flora, fauna, astronomy, and culture of the various tribes of Na’vi of the moon of Pandora.  It is a lower tier Middle Earth, but it had me ask questions of the clash of cultures and how our own local astronomy helped mold our cultures and psyches.

Wait, was I talking about Cocaine Bear?  One more digression.

Todd Field’s film TÁR, the tale of the rise and fall of a fictitious musical conductor played by Cate Blanchett is another exploration into an ecological system - mainly the art and politics of the composers and performers of classical music.  The title character seems untouchable by her peers until her indiscretions, political maneuvering, and unabashed pride cause her career to collapse.  Paradoxically, she is the loving mother of an adopted child and is fiercely protective of the young girl.  Tár is a multifaceted character in a multifaceted story.

Okay, okay… now to the star attraction:  Cocaine Bear.

Unlike the previous two films, I dashed into Theater 1 of the Alamo Drafthouse with a wild eagerness.  My wife trailed after me like an overwrought mother with a rambunctious child.  My first sensation upon entering the theater was the distinct, pungent smell of cannabis.  I searched the theater and saw three young men huddled together a row or two in front of us.  I saw no telltale wisp of fumes.  So… a vape pen?  Or was it the residual stench clinging to their clothes after a toking session outside the theater?  As my wife and I found our seats, I leaned towards her and simply whispered, “Someone’s ready.”

As is their custom, the Alamo Drafthouse treats the audience member with film shorts that precede the film.  The shorts always touch on the subject of the feature.  Since the title of the film we were ready to watch was Cocaine Bear, we were exposed to old PSAs with Smokey the Bear dating back to the fifties.  Other PSAs were stern, cautionary, 30 seconds screeds against crack cocaine delivered by the likes of the flint faced Clint Eastwood and one Paul Reubens aka Pee-Wee Herman whose eyes betrayed a mischeivous scamp who may or may not have dabbled in nose candy during that decade of excess.  Other clips included a fantasy of a martial artist who improbably sparred against a black bear in a bamboo forest and Gene Simmons being buried under a mountain of coke in an excerpt of an episode of Tales from the Darkside.  The shorts wound up with a news segment from the mid eighties which was the true story on which Cocaine Bear was based.

These bears are NOT drug addicts.  They are clean, sober, and only high on life!

At last the feature began with a coked up cocaine smuggler kicking bricks of the expensive white granules off of a small cargo plane.  When he’s about to parachute off the plane with a rebel yell, a bump of turbulence causes him to bang his head on the exit hatch.  He slides out of the plane to an undignified death.

The movie takes few pauses from action scene to action scene.  The titular bear’s first appearance shows her on a cocaine fueled rampage which results in the slaughter of two Scandinavian campers who were in the middle of choosing names for their hypothetical children.  From there we are introduced to an ensemble of actors ranging from “momma bear” Keri Russell and hard boiled plainclothes cop Isiah Whitlock, Jr. to an assortment of crooks including O’Shea Jackson, Alden “Young Han Solo” Erhenreich, and the late, great Ray Liotta.  Each character is on a quest of their own, whether it’s Russell searching for her lost daughter or Liotta trying to track down his downed contraband of coke.  All roads lead to the bear, who seeks out and inhales every torn brick of cocaine and who will rip apart any intruder all for the sake of her fix and two other concerns closer to her ursine heart.

The movie was punctuated with hearty laughter coming from myself and even my better half - with the occasional yelp of terror when the horror became quiet, QUITE visceral.

May I say one thing?  This film may have saved the career of its director, Elizabeth Banks.

Banks, you see, had directed a reboot of Charlie’s Angels only a couple of years back starring Kristen Stewart, Patrick Stewart, and a motley crew of nobodies who produced a lackluster incarnation of the legendary female action triad.  Charlie’s Angels did extremely poorly in the box office, which prompted Banks to make many wild accusations of sexism and toxic masculinity being key to the poor turnout.  What?  Did these toxic males bodily restrain their wives, girlfriends, and daughters from watching this feminist pean of girl power?  Or did women simply have better movies to watch and stream than the umpteenth regurgitation of Charlie’s Angels?

Back to my original point, I’m sure Banks thought she was swallowing her last wedge of humble pie when directing this loopy ride of a film.  She probably thought her next efforts would be direct to streaming nonentities.

Far from it!  Banks succeeded in directing a truly great B-film.  Perhaps the first successful B-film in a decade of superhero films and Star Wars permutations.  As of last week’s box office, only Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania beat out Cocaine Bear in ticket sales, and the former took a 70% nose dive in profit between its premiere to the following weekend.

I can’t, I can’t, I HONESTLY CAN’T see myself seated for another post Endgame Marvel travesty after I’ve witnessed the unabashedly, schlocky Cocaine Bear.  I hope many more films of an old fashioned 70s exploitation film quality follow its lead.  It filled me with such joy, that on our drive home from the theater, I couldn’t stop raving about how much fun I had to my poor, dear wife who was helplessly trapped within our automobile.  Though to be honest, she had a lot of fun as well.

This is more a recounting of my experience before, during, and after the show than it is a review.  All I can say in conclusion is that there is nothing like the concoction of the Alamo Draft House, an order of carnivore pizza, a audience full of stoners and my good lady wife all gathered to see a uproarious tale of drugs, violence, and family.

- JJB