There is no beating around the bush: Cocaine Bear is an absolute insane riot of a film. It is - obviously - the maddest movie of the year; a glorious, high-octane ‘80s romp of man (and kids) vs. nature, turbo-charged with a snowstorm of Class As, that plays out into a gory, slasher-core comedy.
Director Elizabeth Banks and writer Jimmy Warden understood the assignment. It’s a bear! Who finds a lot of cocaine in the forest! And eats it! And goes on a wild rampage! From their (correct) refusal to dilute down the title to make it more palatable through to their scientific research on what would actually happen were an American black bear to ingest a shit-load of drugs, they’ve managed to make the leap from “WTF?” film to “Screen the director’s cut at the BFI, instantly.”
Do you want to see what happens when a bear snuffles up a load of coke? Of course you do. Is it wilder than you first imagined, when the film was first announced? Yes it is, especially in moments like when the bear does a line off a bloody, severed leg. Is it a worthy film for the late Ray Liotta to bow out on? Also yes. Throughout the whole film, when every new character discovers the development in Chattahoochee National Forest and repeats an iteration of the premise (“A bear did coke”, “The bear’s eaten the cocaine”, “It loves coke” “That bear was FUCKED!” etc), the joke simply doesn’t get old, it just gets hilariously, snortingly funnier. And, god, there is not one person on this planet who doesn’t need a laugh right now. As Banks told Esquire earlier this month: “I think it is a great reminder not to take everything so fucking seriously”. No notes!
But what really cements this movie as pure, big-screen perfection is its running time. Prior to watching it, I thought, how long can they really spin this out for? Google informed me that the film’s length is 95 minutes: stunning. As close to the should-be mandatory 90 minutes that all films should run for as possible.
I have spent the past few days catching up on the excellent Oscar-nominated films All Quiet On The Western Front (2 hours 23 minutes) and Tár (2 hours 38 minutes). Somewhere around the hour and a half mark a trigger goes off in my brain: is this really necessary? And, as the credits roll, even on a more-than-worthy, multi-award winning movie, I inevitably think: “Could have done with being half an hour shorter.”
Recent months have also seen the two-and-a-half-hourer become somewhat standard: Elvis (2 hours 39 minutes), Blonde (2 hours 47 minutes), Everything Everywhere All At Once (2 hours 20 minutes). Why has this been normalised? I can’t be the only one whose brain has become warped and accustomed instead to the 47-minute run of HBO-type shows – which, incidentally, is what scientists have said is about the exact amount of time the human brain can take in information for. Double that, with a toilet/tea break in the middle, and you have the hallowed 90 minutes right there. An epilogue for your protagonist? No thank you sir, I need to check my phone.
Too many films, like a jibber-jabbering dinner party guest who has overindulged, overstay their welcome. The efficient Cocaine Bear understands this, and in providing an exhilarating, short high, secures its rightful place in cinematic history, not a moment too soon.
Cocaine Bear is in cinemas from today
