In comedy there's a difference between self-awareness and constantly winking at the camera. This one unfortunately falls in with the latter. The tone should have been grindhousey and naïve - instead it's all written from a very clear modern perspective and parlance- missed opportunity resulting in a weird conflict between tone and setting. A modern movie where the only difference is that they're wearing 80s clothes and listening to 80s music does not sell the setting and is distracting in a bad way (like the absolutely pointless 90's setting in captain marvel). Speaking of missed opportunities, they REALLY should have gone practical with the bear, a throwback animatronic contraption for the gore scenes and a trained bear for the rest of the shots was so obviously the way to go - it takes place in the 80's for crying out loud. What we get instead is the expected, typical over-animated cgi that provides absolutely zero gravitas in what are supposed to be exciting or even cheekily scary scenes. Run-of-the-mill cgi robs every bear scene of any weight or intimidation whatsoever (also strips it of any potential comedy). Either lean all the way in or don't bother. Sloppy and uninspired. Would have probably turned out much better if it was an indie affair with a low budget and not a bunch of A-listers from finance to script all the way down to side characters because an A-lister project cannot by definition have the guts to make something magical and insane, in other words what this SHOULD have been. Gutlessness is what defines an A-lister project, and that is what we get here. The novelty of the premise notwithstanding, this is not worth your time. Skip.
Review of Cocaine Bear
