Category Archives: Reviews

Life is messy & so is ‘Megalopolis’

27 Friday Sep 2024

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Make no mistake, Megalopolis is a mess. 

Francis Ford Coppola’s latest, and perhaps, last feature is overblown, grandiose, and barely holds together, the storytelling confused with plot points dropped and characters disappearing. 

For all that, this work of an 85-year-old auteur is also a film of stunning ambition as a lion in winter roars at the dying light. Gorgeous to behold with eyepopping production design and cinematography and a top-flight cast, forgive it its excesses and just surrender to the spectacle. 

One suspects that Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), the Robert Moses-like figure who has utopian dreams of remaking the titular Megalopolis—a struggling city, part ancient Rome, part down-and-dirty-’70s era Manhattan—is a stand-in for Coppola himself. Certainly, his dreams are as flamboyant as the director’s and as Coppola has struggled for decades with studio suits so Cesar grapples with opposition from corrupt Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) and powerful banker Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight).  

For everyone but Cicero’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who is in thrall to his mad, arrogant genius, Cesar is a troublesome enigma. And, truly, no one has reason to trust him. To Cicero and Crassus, he represents unwanted change that might undermine their dirty business. Yet, the people whose lives Cesar insists he seeks to improve have even less reason to put their faith in him: In order to build his utopia, he razes apartment blocks, leaving people homeless. 

Cesar obsesses over the future in a movie rooted in the past. His own offices are in the Chrysler Building, and the film acts as a valentine to its Art Deco magnificence. In a movie that casts itself as an operatic ancient Roman fable with a nod to Shakespeare, Madison Square Garden plays the Coliseum in the Megalopolis’ most arresting sequence, “Bread and Circuses,” as intrigue unfolds against the backdrop of chariot races. 

Coppola’s longtime cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. (Tetro, Twixt) lens work and Beth Mickle and Bradley Rubin’s vivid production design evocatively capture Coppola’s vision. The large cast that includes Laurence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffman, Coppola’s sister Talia Shire, D.B. Sweeney, and James Remar is excellent, although some actors appear to be in an entirely different movie. In particular, Coppola’s nephew Jason Schwartzman as Cicero aide Jason Zanderz, Aubrey Plaza as Crassus’ bride and Cesar’s former lover Wow Platinum, and Shia LaBeouf as Crassus’ duplicitous and gleefully psychotic nephew Clodio Pulcher are live wires among their mostly sober costars. This isn’t a flaw. They are fun to watch. 

Cesar has one peculiar talent: He can stop time. Manipulating time, of course, is a filmmaker’s trick: Coppola can freeze a frame, skip forward and back between past and future, compress decades into mere hours. No such luck in real life and he seems only too aware of that. It’s been 61 years since the director made his feature debut, Dementia 13, and Megalopolis feels like the summing up of all those decades since, the triumphs and the failures as well as the middling features that helped a man who likes to live large pay the bills. It’s big. It’s chaotic. If this is his swan song, it’s epic. —Pam Grady

A star discovers too late there are worse things than aging in the black comic body horror ‘The Substance’

19 Thursday Sep 2024

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Back in what is sometimes called Hollywood’s Golden Age but might as well be a long-lost prehistoric era given the pace of change over 70 years, Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard was a 50-year-old actress consigned to the dustbin of history thanks to an entertainment industry that—at least when it comes to women—values youth.

The more things change… Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) in the current century finds herself in a similar predicament in Coralie Fargeat’s blackly funny body horror movie The Substance. Only in some ways, Elizabeth has it far worse than Norma—Norma, at least had her faithful manservant Max and, for a little while, her hunky screenwriter gigolo Joe. But Elizabeth spends her 50th birthday—the moment, her gargoyle of a boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid, earning his money) says everything stops and proves it by firing the one-time star from her job hosting an exercise show—alone in a bar, lining up martinis like little soldiers draining one after another. Home is equally chilly, a chic apartment with a commanding view but little personality other than a huge portrait of the resident’s owner. It’s a lonely lair.

In short, Elizabeth is ripe for the mysterious titular treatment that promises to restore youth. How it accomplishes the feat would lead most people to pass as would the cloak-and-dagger aspects of ordering it from an anonymous voice on the phone and the creepy, dilapidated building where Elizabeth must go to pick up her order. But she is depressed and desperate and only too keenly aware of aging. Offered a “cure” for the simple act of growing older, she jumps at it.

Some panacea. The magical elixir that promises to turn back time can only do so by splitting Elizabeth into two separate and distinct entities in a terrifying, visceral procedure. Sue (Margaret Qualley) emerges, perky and beautiful, as physically perfect as she is empty-headed, charming Harvey into hiring her to replace Elizabeth as fitness maven. The two women are supposed to be one but, in thrall to her new life, Sue gets greedy to her and Elizabeth’s peril.

Moore and Qualley excel in filling out roles that don’t have a lot of, ahem, substance—Fargeat pays precious little attention to either women’s character. Instead, they are types – the one-time star fearful of the onslaught of aging and the recklessly selfish ingenue. In a way, Fargeat is no kinder to women than the industry she’s critiquing. These characters are anorexic—only not in their eating habits.

Also, while there are grisly scenes in The Substance, particularly in the cleaving moment that would do David Cronenberg proud, nothing is so terrifying as Quaid. The comic relief also provides the true grossout moments. Attired in colorful bespoke outfits that make him look like he’s perpetually on his way to some septuagenarian prom, Harvey has the manners of—one hesitates to say “pig,” because that’s insulting to pigs but he’s definitely feral. There is nothing so repugnant and terrifying in the film as the extreme closeups of Harvey talking and eating with his mouth wide open. You have to hand it to Quaid for his utter lack of vanity even as you have to wonder why Fargeat felt the need to one up the actual horror with Quaid’s scenes.

The Substance has hugely entertaining moments, but it’s not exactly original. You can namecheck Cronenberg, David Lynch, Brian De Palma, and more, even John Frankenheimer whose 1966 sci-fi thriller Seconds is this film’s granddad. Like Elizabeth Sparkle, John Randolph’s banker in a panic over growing older, reached out to a mysterious organization for a promised cure. Reborn as Rock Hudson, he discovered there are worse things than sagging skin and wrinkles. Too bad Elizabeth never saw that movie. Might’ve saved herself from a world of hurt. —Pam Grady

A young teen nurses a crush when he finds himself among ‘Big Boys’

12 Friday Jul 2024

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A camping trip proves revelatory for an awkward 14-year-old in writer-director Corey Sherman’s winning feature debut Big Boys. Star Isaac Krasner navigates a tricky role as a closeted teen who shields himself against dangers he perceives in the world – and his snarky big brother – with a barrage of nervous trivia and factoids. But that arsenal feels useless as feels the pangs of his first big crush during the weekend away.

The trip has become a tradition for Jamie (Krasner), his brother Will (Taj Cross), and their cool older cousin Allie (Dora Madison). Both boys look forward to hanging out with her but this year is different: She is bringing her new boyfriend Dan (David Johnson III) along. Jamie goes into panic mode, already convinced this stranger will ruin their vacation. But when they meet, Jamie’s anxiety melts under Dan’s reality. A big, handsome, friendly bear of a man with a sweet, patient disposition, he has Jamie’s undivided attention. That Dan also shares Jamie’s love of Alicia Keys just makes him that much more attractive.

Sherman’s storytelling is compact and efficient. Jamie is like a big, ungainly puppy around Dan while trying to keep his feelings hidden. Certainly, Will barely notices the difference in Jamie’s behavior as he tries to interest his little bro in hanging out with a pair of girls they meet by the lake. Jamie even tries to go along with that, paired up with a teen nearly as uncomfortable as he is. But ultimately he is really only interested in being around Dan even if it tortures him to see Dan with Allie.

On the surface, not a lot happens in Big Boys. It’s just four people hanging out in the woods over a weekend. The real drama is unfolding in Jamie’s mind and heart as he navigates his growing feelings for Dan and takes his first tentative steps into coming into his own. Framed as a comedy, the film is funny but what truly captivates in this coming-of-age tale are its big heart and the sweet teen at its center. –Pam Grady  

Big Boys is available to watch on Apple, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Vudu, Direct TV, and through local cable providers.

The stunt man becomes the star as Ryan Gosling becomes THE FALL GUY

03 Friday May 2024

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With The Fall Guy, Ryan Gosling steps from the high of Barbie for another high. This one won’t get him another Oscar nomination – it’s more of an amuse-bouche rather than a full meal – but it’s fun if overlong. Stuntman-turned-director David Leitch’s valentine to his former profession leans into Gosling’s charm and comic chops to deliver an amiable blend of rock’-em-sock-‘em action, comedy, and romance.

The film credits its inspiration to Glen A. Larson, creator of the Lee Majors-starring 1980s series of the same name, but in that show, the stunt man spent his off hours as a bounty hunter. There is none of that in Drew Pearce’s screenplay. Instead, Colt Seavers (Gosling) is simply one of the best at his profession and has become the go-to stunt double for superstar Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Or he was, anyway, until a horrific accident on one of Ryder’s sets sends Seaver into a tailspin, causing him to step away not just from his job but also from the woman he loves, camera operator and wannabe director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt).

Jody’s big break directing a Ryder film is what pulls Colt back when producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) insists Ryder and Jody both want him and, in fact, need him. So, he joins the location in Sydney, only to discover Gail lied – particularly about Jody wanting him anywhere around her after he so abruptly severed their relationship. Not that Colt has much time to consider this since he soon finds himself chased by bad guys and wanted for murder. What’s a stuntman to do but apply his talents to his new role as wanted man?

Gosling and Blunt are beguiling, Taylor-Johnson’s negative space of a personality works well in the context of a raging egomaniacal movie star – are they seriously considering this guy for Bond? – and Waddingham, Winston Duke as stunt coordinator Dan Tucker, and Stephanie Hsu as a striver wangling her way to a producer credit add invaluable support. But, honestly, the actors and the rickety plot are mere window dressing for the real stars of this production: the stunts and their performers.

The action rarely stops for plot as every scene is a set up for stunts. Some of them are part of Jody’s movie, a space alien/cowboy mishmash that looks truly awful but offers a canvas for stunts as small as setting someone on fire to big set pieces involving cars and helicopters. These scenes are a peek behind the curtain that give the audience a look at the mechanics of what stunt people do. Then there are the others in which Colt finds himself fighting for his life in a variety of dire situations, capped off by an homage to Miami Vice that is worth the price of a movie ticket all by itself.

This is not the first time Ryan Gosling has played a stunt man. He was a movie stunt driver who moonlighted as a getaway driver in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and a carnival motorcycle stunt performer in Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines. But The Fall Guy has far more in common with another stuntman-turned-director’s work, Hal Needham’s raucous comedy Hooper, than it does with either of those dramas. Maybe it’s not as silly but it is still essentially a diversion. The phrase “escapist entertainment” applies. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Grab some popcorn and enjoy the mayhem. —Pam Grady

When it comes to death-defying feats, nothing is impossible in the latest MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE

12 Wednesday Jul 2023

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What is it with action movies and stairs this year? First, there was Keanu Reeves bounding up the flights leading to Paris’ Sacre Coeur basilica only to bounce back down with echoing, bone-rattling thuds in John Wick: Chapter 4. Now, in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1, IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) hurtle down Rome’s Spanish Steps in a tiny yellow Fiat pursued by Humvee intent on flattening it. It is a thrilling scene – and the most prosaic action sequence in a movie that constantly one ups itself with bigger, flashier, and more daring stunts.

The plot revolves around a pair of keys that threaten not only world order but humanity itself should they fall into the wrong hands. Ethan and his team are tasked with securing both keys to prevent worldwide catastrophe and possibly Armageddon. The film evolves into a kind of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” – although substitute “airport” for “planes,” which is where Ethan meets Grace – with motorcycles and base-jumping parachutes throw in as bonus features. That there is a plot at all is one of Dead Reckoning’s biggest feats. So jampacked with stunts it is, had director Christopher McQuarrie and his co-screenwriter Erik Jendresen simply forgotten about creating a story, it would have been understandable.

Instead, in those quiet moments between chases, combat, and explosions, Dead Reckoning becomes a kind of meditation on the loneliness of spies that can never come in from the cold. This is true of Ethan’s confederates Luther Stickell, comic relief Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), and assassin Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). And it’s true of Ethan. True, in a kind of Three Musketeers all-for-one-one-for-all kind of way, the four have each other with maybe Grace making a fifth, but even in that, they are isolated. They exist in the shadows, their work never acknowledged and knowing that there will be no prisoner exchange should they ever face capture and that they will be disavowed completed in the event an operation goes sideways. Ethan and his cohort are ghosts.

Ghosts that nevertheless make a considerable about of noise, clanging their chains out in the open as subtlety is certainly not among the IMF team’s talents. And so, we are back to the chase through the streets of Rome and yet another through Venice. This is a film that will ignite serious FOMO in those that love to travel. But all the beautiful backdrops are in the service of the stunts that render Cruise, famous for doing his own stunts, a kid in a candy store. The work is breathtaking. It’s exciting with a climax that truly inspires awe at both the predicament facing Ethan and stunt/effects wizardry at play. Those final scenes beautifully set up the cliffhanger, which isn’t how will Hunt and his IMF team prevail in the next chapter but how will Cruise – now over 60 – top himself yet again after the one-two punch of Top Gun: Maverick and now part one of Dead Reckoning? – Pam Grady

Be ‘Afraid’ of ‘Beau’s’ endless journey

21 Friday Apr 2023

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Beau Is Afraid. The title is literal, Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), fears everything, anxiety rooted in his relationship with his monster mommy Mona (Patti LuPone) that permeates every corner of his life. It’s a promising start as Midsommar writer/director Ari Aster’s latest begins in Beau’s psychiatrist’s (Stephen McKinley Henderson) where Beau picks up new meds prior to a visit with Mom, but it doesn’t take long to unravel. Three hours long, and full of forced surrealism and repellant characters, Beau Is Afraid only intermittently amuses. It’s not so much a movie as a filmgoers’ exercise in endurance.

The pity is it begins well enough. Beau lives in such an urban hellscape that you half expect Phoenix to show up in a dual role as the Joker to confront his meek doppelganger. These early scenes with bodies moldering in the streets, crowds of junkies and criminals that seem more dead than alive, and violent crime busting out all over feel like the beginning of an especially visceral zombie movie. But Aster soon moves on to a suburban home where Beau, recovering from an accident, finds himself the prisoner of its cheerful owners (Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan) before running off into a forest where he finds a theater group mounting a seemingly endless play. From there, he works his way home to Mother and a chance meeting with his childhood crush Elaine (an ill-used Parker Posey).

That’s not all, of course. There are plenty of flashbacks back to Beau’s childhood, explicating the roots of his troubled relationship with Mona (played by Zoe Lister-Jones in these scenes), even a trip to the attic long forbidden to Beau, and much more. So much more. It all feels… endless. And pointless, unless the only point is to torture this poor guy for existing.

While the rest of the cast plays at being cartoons (they have no choice – like Jessica Rabbit, they are simply drawn that way), Phoenix delivers a full-bodied, empathetic performance. All for naught. His efforts are simply wasted in this epic empty exercise. –Pam Grady

Chatterbox: David Johansen tells his own story in glorious ‘Personality Crisis’

14 Friday Apr 2023

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Nearly a decade ago, Martin Scorsese cast an actor to play the young David Johansen in Vinyl, his 2016 short-lived television series set during the glam rock era of the early 1970s. Now he turns his lens to the real deal with Personality Crisis: One Night Only, Scorsese’s first feature documentary since 2019’s Rolling Thunder Revue and co-directed by editor David Tedeschi. Using a January 2020 Johansen performance at New York’s Café Carlyle – on the singer’s 70th birthday, yet – as a base, the film flits back and forth through time to tell Johansen’s story from his childhood on Staten Island to his days fronting the legendary protopunk band The New York Dolls and beyond, a lively snapshot of a fabulous 50-year career.

The title, of course. Comes from one of the Dolls’ signature tunes. While David Johansen performing as Buster Poindexter performing the songs of David Johansen, the conceit of his Café Carlyle show, might seem like the definition of a “personality crisis,” what is manifest in this wildly entertaining documentary is that crisis of personality has never been an issue for Johansen. He is all personality, warm, witty, and wise as a septuagenarian on his SiriusXM podcast and in conversation with his daughter, Leah Hennessey, and virtually jumping out of the screen as a young man whether performing with the Dolls or in early interviews.

The Café Carlyle performance captures Johansen in fine form, masterfully interpreting his catalog and as an ace raconteur relating stories of his life between songs. The New York Dolls footage interspersed with this is stunning, demonstrating exactly how and why the band was so influential on the glam and punk movements and making the case for how contemporary it remains. Heck, these days they would be banned in Florida, Texas, and other states for their outfits alone let alone lyrics that would make Moms for Liberty types squirm.

Scorsese and Tedeschi don’t stop with just the bookends of Johansen’s career but also delve into his work with The David Johansen Group, his blues band The Harry Smiths, the birth of his pompadoured alter ego Poindexter (just don’t ask him to play his hit “Hot Hot Hot”), and the second 2004-2011 iteration of the Dolls.

Seeing Johansen’s various iterations on stage and in videos is glorious. He is a consummate showman even when simply standing and holding a drink. But Personality Crisis’ secret sauce is Johansen’s vivid memories related in that purring growl of a voice. Scorsese and Tedeschi have made a wonderfully vivid documentary of someone for whom the word “icon” actually fits. But be forewarned: This is a film that will leave you jonesing for Johansen to bring his Café Carlyle show to your own town. – Pam Grady

Personality Crisis: One Night Only available on demand and on Showtime as of 8pm, Friday, April 14.

Flash, Bam Boom: Keanu Reeves’ brilliant return as John Wick

24 Friday Mar 2023

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Keanu Reeves as John Wick in John Wick: Chapter 4. Photo Credit: Murray Close

Who—or what—is John Wick, really? A nearly indestructible assassin, sure. A lonely widower, definitely. A loyal friend, yes. A lover of dogs, certainly. But as John Wick: Chapter 4 gloriously proves, he is also a live-action cartoon character, as well, a Roadrunnerfigure who melds the qualities of that elusive desert bird with his genius for evading the falling anvil or rolling boulder with those of his hapless antagonist, Wile E. Coyote, who never gets to avoid the anvil or boulder. In his fourth and final outing as the character, Keanu Reeves gracefully inhabits both qualities, dodging bullets and flying fists and feet while expressing the pain of every bone-rattling encounter.

With Wick still among the living despite their best efforts to vanquish him, his vexed former employers at the criminal underworld’s High Table have reached out to a new psychopath to front their organization and bring Wick down. Arrogant and supercilious, Marquis (Pennywise himself, Bill Skarsgård) is a coward at heart who relishes in inflicting cruelty on others. One of his strategies in pursuing Wick is to isolate him from his allies, beginning by decertifying New York’s five-star hotel for the killer elite, the Continental, a dark turn of fate for manager Winston (the magnificent Ian McShane) and concierge Charon (the late Lance Reddick, the picture of elegance). The Tokyo Continental and its manager, Shimazu (Hiroyuki Sanada, Reeves’ costar in 47 Ronin), are similarly endangered by the Marquis’  lethal initiative. To further insure success, he blackmails one of Wick’s friends, Caine (Hong Kong icon Donnie Yen), a blind assassin, into targeting his buddy. And Marquis keeps raising the bounty on Wick’s head, unleashing an army of killers, including Tracker (Shamier Anderson), who, like Wick, loves dogs.

Fans of Walter Hill’s 1979 classic The Warriors will delight in John Wick’s third act, which is framed as a homage to that action thriller, only instead of traveling across New York, Wick speeds across Paris. And instead of encountering Gramercy Riffs, Baseball Furies, and Rogues, he is beset by a seemingly endless horde of killers intent on earning millions by taking him down.

In this fourth outing together, neither Reeves nor director Chad Stahelski have lost a step. Reeves is all-in as the nearly indestructible Wick, kind of the anti-Tom Cruise, in that you know that that one is always going to come out the way he started, fit and fresh as a daisy. With Wick, no one would be surprised if he had full-on hip and knee replacements between the last film and this or wore an elaborate brace beneath his impeccable tailoring. Reeves makes us feel every punch, fall, and other crunching shock to his system. And it’s a lot of such trauma: Stahelski rarely eases up on the action of tension for long. As a former stuntman, he knows how this kind of action is supposed to work and he is a genius at execution. The film is nearly three hours long but the time flies by.

Every Roadrunner cartoon eventually comes to an end, and so it appears the same with John Wick. But if this is Reeves’ last go-round in Wick’s skin, he is going out in a glorious hail of flash, bam, boom. It is a fitting goodbye to an indelible character. –Pam Grady

When the personal interferes with the political: ‘What We Do Next’

03 Friday Mar 2023

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What We Do Next might as well be titled The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions, for it is perceived good intentions that lead to murder and incarceration for one character and a ticking time bomb in the careers of two others in writer-director Stephen Belber’s claustrophobic drama.

The good deed is $500 that lawyer Paul Fleming (Corey Stoll) gives to community activist Sandy James (Karen Pittman), who hands it off to Elsa Mercado (Michelle Veintimilla), a teenager she’s counseling. Over What We Do Next’s slim, 76-minute running time, Sandy will insist over and over again that she had no idea the money would go toward the purchase of a gun that Elsa would use to murder the father who was sexually abusing her, protests that ring increasingly hollow in the face of Sandy’s own behavior.

Whatever the truth is, it never came out at Elsa’s trial. Sixteen years later, when a now system-hardened Elsa is paroled, Sandy is a rising political star with an eye toward becoming New York’s mayor in the not-too-distant future. Paul is a divorced sad sack but still a successful corporate lawyer. And there is a reporter hot on the trail of the real story behind Elsa’s crime – leverage for someone with ambitions of her own but with zero experience and a prison GED.

The story of this messy trio plays out over seven chapters in a chamber piece that speaks to Belber’s other job as a playwright. So, does the dialogue, which is literate and sharp – these are people who wield words as if they were knives. Sandy and Paul insist they are on the side of right and may have even convinced themselves of that. But they will never fool Elsa who is only too aware that she did long, hard time while the people who abetted her got off scot-free and are now craven in their attempts to stay in the clear.

The film is billed as a crime drama but, really, it is more a morality play as Belber peels back the layers of Sandy and Paul’s hypocrisy. They have convinced themselves that Elsa’s anger and bitterness are misplaced but she has to listen to their self-justifications, which might enrage anyone.

Paul is a well-meaning weasel, ostensibly willing to do the right thing but when doing so might impact the life he’s built for himself, he quickly back pedals. He is divorced and freely admits to  being a crap father, so not stepping up is apparently embedded in his DNA. If he’s incapable of being there for his son, what chance does Elsa have?

As for Sandy, we all know a Sandy. She is our councilperson or Congressional representative or governor or mayor. She is all about the big picture and she is dedicated to raising the lives of the underrepresented and underprivileged. She wants to help. She insists on it and backs it up with proposed legislation. The problem is that it is all abstract with her. She’s not so different from Orson Welles’ villain Harry Lime in The Third Man who looks upon people as “dots,” except while Harry is indifferent to all that humanity, Sandy is laser focused on proving how much she cares. She’s all about improving the lives of the masses.

But the masses are one thing, an individual like Elsa in all her messy humanity is something else. Sandy prefers the anonymity of all those dots to one woman she sees as an unfortunate blast from her past who could potentially stand in the way of the future she has so carefully mapped.

Belber delivers a tight, taut, and enraging drama, performed by three actors at the top of their game. It is a chilly film, the only heat coming from Elsa’s unregulated emotions and all the more powerful for that. Like Sandy, What We Do Next never loses sight of its end game. –Pam Grady

Higher than the average bruin: ‘Cocaine Bear’

24 Friday Feb 2023

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WWRSD?

What would Ranger Smith do?

What would Ranger Smith do if Yogi Bear and Boo Boo stumbled onto a lost shipment of cocaine, got into it, and went all angry grizzly on any human that crossed their paths?

Well, Ranger Smith was never as quick as the ursid smarter than the average bear, so he’d probably end up Yogi’s lunch, which is not far off from what happens in the brutal, wickedly funny Cocaine Bear.

The horror comedy, written by Jimmy Warden and directed by Elizabeth Banks, is based on real events that happened in 1985 when a drug dealer named Andrew Thornton jettisoned the cargo of their overweight plane over a national forest. A bear stumbled on the stash of coke, snacked on it, and died. He apparently did not live long enough to lay waste to any passing tourists.

The motley assortment of people wandering the woods in Cocaine Bear are not so lucky. This is one of those movies in which the majority of the characters are simply fodder. They are walking and talking and soon to be bear food. They include a trio of teenage hooligans; a pair of European tourists; amorous Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale); Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), the wildlife inspector Liz has a crush on; drug kingpin Syd (Ray Liotta); Syd’s grief-stricken son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) and his best friend Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.); narcotics cop Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.); tweens playing hooky Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and Henry (Christian Convery); and Sari (Keri Russell), Dee Dee’s mom on the hunt for the wayward kids.

The smartest thing about the movie is that it is set in 1985 and it feels like 1985, specifically a drive-in movie from 1985. The action is bonkers with body parts flying and the bear behaving with all the homicidal hunger and intent as Jaws’ shark with not a Roy Scheider or Robert Shaw in sight to stop her coke-fueled rampage. She is having quite the binge!

High praise goes to little Convery as a foul-mouthed tyke who will say anything to pretend to knowledge he doesn’t have. Ehrenreich and O’Shea share amiable chemistry as best buds, reluctant in their mission to find the wayward drugs. Veterans of typically more dramatic fare, Martindale, Whitlock, and the late Liotta (to whom Cocaine Bear is dedicated) are clearly having a blast in their unaccustomed roles of starring in a live-action cartoon. Seriously, Yogi Bear would not be out of place if he were the animal out of his mind.

It is a little sad that Cocaine Bear is arriving in theaters in February. Universal should have held back or the summer months so those towns still blessed with drive-ins could play this ultimate drive-in fare. Maybe with Tucker and Dale vs. Evil on a double bill. Possible with streaming, of course, but don’t wait for that. The mayhem Banks creates with her deranged bear deserves to be seen on a big screen in all its visceral, outrageously funny glory. –Pam Grady