The Bear didn’t live up to the hype.

Cocaine Bear made its anticipated theatrical release last Friday. Anticipated but not because it was expected to be a cinematic masterpiece but anticipated because of the bizarre story that it attempts to tell.

Cocaine Bear takes place in 1985 and follows the story of a 500-pound black bear that ingests tons of cocaine and then proceeds to go on a murderous rampage killing many in the natural park that it inhabits. 

They try to weave a half-baked story throughout the film and this is where things start to go wrong. 

Personally, I didn’t come to see this movie to see a story about a father and the disconnect with his son. The movie is at its best when the bear is featured prominently.

Unfortunately, almost all of the funny moments with the bear are also given away by the trailer. When watching the film I felt that I had already seen the vast majority of its scenes and the only ones I hadn’t seen were the ones that pushed the plot elements of the movie forwards. 

One nice thing that isn’t revealed in the trailers is the appearance of two bear cubs, who also subsequently get addicted to cocaine just like their mother. They act as nice new faces toward the end of the movie, but unfortunately at this point, the movie had already lost me. 

The characters also make a big deal about collecting all the lost cocaine in the park because if they don’t then the cartels will hunt them down, but there is no mention made of it as they are leaving the park empty-handed. 

After the family returns home they’ll now have to deal with cartels hunting down any and all members of their families to get back the money that was lost. So suddenly they are all just ok with losing family members even though the entire arc of Alden Ehrenreich’s character is about him overcoming the loss of his wife and so now after all he’s gone through we’re expected to just go along with him being ok to put his family in danger. 

The writers of this movie should’ve realized that the people coming to see the titled “Cocaine Bear” aren’t coming to see the next Godfather. They’re there to see a bear do dumb stuff for an hour and 30 minutes 

Maybe if they decided to focus more on the home life of the bear and how its newfound addiction to cocaine affects the dynamic at home. I don’t think the cubs would be ok with their mother just slaying any random park-goer that comes by. 

With all that being said, I had a good time watching the movie and so did most people, with the movie receiving a 70% on rotten tomatoes, so all of my issues with the movie don’t amount to a can of beans. 

I give it 4/10 kilos