That being said “Cocaine Bear” is far from perfect. In fact, it’s quite an uneven affair. The run time is only 95-minutes, but it feels like the film takes too much time for all the characters to reach the forest. Action beats should come at least at 10-minute marks, but the gaps take longer here. Sorry to say, but that falls onto director Elizabeth Banks’ lap. She made her feature length directing debut with “Pitch Perfect 2” and followed that up with “Charlie’s Angels” which was both a critical and box office bomb. It raised a lot of eyebrows when she was chosen to direct this title. Yes, a few the sequences involving the bear were a lot of fun and there are some great laughs here too, but that appears more of a product of Jimmy Warden’s screenplay, and not her directing.

Casting is also an issue here. Kerri Russell is one of the leads playing a mother whose daughter is caught in the forest when the bear is loose. At one point in the story, she is informed the bear has dragged off her child and she has no real reaction to this news. Any other parent would almost completely lose it if they heard such a thing, but Kerri barely reacts to that news. That either lies with her or Elizabeth Banks’ direction. There is another part where she is supposed to act scared because the bear is close by, again this is something she can’t pull off and while much of this picture is camp, you need to pull off that emotion to help sell this picture.

“Cocaine Bear” delivers exactly what it’s supposed to despite whatever flaws it does have. Sometimes we want movie where we don’t even have to think and if you don’t here, a good time will be had.

2.5 Swords