The movie Cocaine Bear shows us one thing (and only one thing) – the filmmakers did not let the emotions of innumerable human death cloud over the humor of the bear on cocaine. Every dismemberment of the human body by the bear is soon accompanied by some cartoonish behavior by the survivors, and the audience is sheltered from mourning. This is a good manipulative device in the movie to know – how to control the audience’s emotions and guide it the moviemaker’s way.

Overall, the story of the cocaine bear is weak, the acting is so-so. The movie is pretty stale.

Based on a true story, the subject is unique. A bear feeding on cartons of cocaine air-dropped from the sky and thus become aggressive and go on a human killing spree.

But once the movie-makers show the bear snorting cocaine in excess, they showed diversion from the original story. Which means the horizon of the story is limitless and they can show more of whatever is probable and improbable. But after laying down the ground rules that they are on a binge, the movie-makers seem to cower down and be afraid of something.

The bear was “humanized” in some shots and in one scene is humping a tree. The picturization of this shot is timid. They kept the camera at a long shot and the viewers don’t experience the emotion or the fun of it.

Then another time, there is a scene where the bear sleeps on top of a male character. Precious moments pass and nothing happens. The camera is basically fixed. If ever there was a time for a surprise – it was here. But, this was a major lost opportunity. The scene ends with a banal remark like: “Her vagina is on my ear.” Either the dialogue is incorrect or I missed a metaphor, either way doesn’t matter to me.

This movie is “woke filmmaking.” The filmmakers seem afraid of being cancelled. They could have created an outrageous bear with outrageous acts of blood and gore. Instead, they made a tame lukewarm movie, pussyfooting every opportunity the idiosyncratic subject presented to them.

The Movie Cocaine Bear needed more cocaine in the story than the bear.