Weekend Watch: Cocaine Bear, Bel-Air, We Have A Ghost
Drugged up ursine, dramatically fresh prince and a dead guy stranded
Image Credit: Universal Pictures
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, a drug-fuelled rampage, a return home and a supernatural encounter. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite
Cocaine? Check. Bear. Check. Yes, Cocaine Bear certainly delivers on both of its titular elements. Fortunately, it’s about more than that, but only by a little bit. Essentially, this is a wacky comedy that throws drug dealers, park rangers, cops, kids and a mother into the mix.
The film, written by Jimmy Warden, takes a true story of a drug runner dumping his load of cocaine over a wide area from a plane (and dying in the process in 1985) and the bear in Georgia who ended up consuming a large amount of the narcotics. The real bear just died tragically, but in Cocaine Bear it goes on a rampage, savaging people and causing chaos.
It doesn’t necessarily sound like the blueprint for a comedy –– more like a horror –– but in director Elizabeth Banks’ hands, it manages to tread the line between both, though erring more towards the gonzo side.
The titular ursine, brought to life by the CG wizards of Weta, is a fun creation, even if it sometimes looks less like a real bear and more like a cartoon.
That’s also true of some of the characters, who run the gamut from Keri Russell’s believably harried (and heroic) single mother Sari to the likes of wannabe criminal ‘Stache (Aaron Holliday), who gives off a real young Dax Shepard energy (but is still entertaining, even if he’s simply sketched).
Cocaine Bear’s tone, a little like the central creature, doesn’t often settle on one thing, which can be distracting and ends up hurting the entertainment value a little. But there is certainly plenty of that to be found here. If you go in knowing what to expect, you’ll be rewarded.
Cocaine Bear is in UK and US cinemas now.
Image Credit: Peacock
Bel-Air is one of those projects that have no real business existing. It began life as a fake trailer for a dramatic re-imagining of 1990s sitcom The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, created by Morgan Cooper. The trailer caught the attention of Will Smith, who starred in the original show. And thus, the idea for a new show was born.
We’re now in the second season of the series, which follows West Philadelphia’s Will Smith (Jabari Banks) who gets into one little fight, his mom gets scared, and he moves to live with his auntie and uncle in Bel-Air. The basic set-up remained the same, but while the characters were similar, they were subtly shifted to work as dramatic archetypes. The biggest change is represented by Will’s cousin Carlton, who in the original comedy series is an uptight goofy wannabe, but Bel-Air’s version, played by Olly Sholotan, is an ambitious, driven sort managing his mental health with medication and initially less than thrilled to have Will in his home.
The resulting series was much more successful than it had any right to be, with Banks’ charisma anchoring the storylines. Season One ended with revelations about Will’s father, which led to him leaving the family home. That, along with a couple of other cliffhangers are largely resolved by the end of the first couple of episodes, which rather deflates any tension and makes what has been a serialised show feel more like the sitcom from which it was born.
Yet what made Bel-Air work in its first season still largely works here: the dialogue is snappy, the characters work and it’s also funny when it needs to be.
The first three episodes of Bel-Air Season 2 are on Peacock now. I’ve seen the first four.
Image credit: Netflix
It’s become something of a refrain for me to say how little a fan of horror I am, and then to admit how much I enjoyed a particular scary movie. That’s certainly true with the work of Christopher Landon – he of the Happy Death Day films and Freaky, among others, but that might be because those three movies are driven by sharp humour and knowing subversion of genre tropes.
With We Have A Ghost, Landon heads into a more family-friendly arena, swapping violent thrills and swearing for mild ghost action and silly jokes. The result is still worth watching but carries little of the power of his previous work.
The story here is of the fracturing Presley family, led by patriarch Frank (Anthony Mackie). They move into a fixer-upper of a house in Illinois, one that its realtor fails to mention is haunted. Youngest son Kevin (Jahi Winston) discovers the ghostly presence in the attic – Ernest, a spirit (played by Stranger Things’ David Harbour) who can’t talk or remember his past life.
When Ernest’s existence becomes more widely known, it triggers plenty of interest from the likes of shady medium Judy Romano (Jennifer Coolidge, weirdly muted and vaguely ill-used here) and Dr Leslie Monroe (Tig Notaro) who has an interest in parapsychology and a hidden agenda.
Landon here adapts Geoff Manaugh’s short story and the need to tone everything down for a family audience seems to sap him of some of his ability to charm and thrill. Harbour has a moment here and there, and there is an enjoyable action sequence involving car chases late on, but We Have A Ghost is a muted affair compared to the likes of Happy Death Day. Unlike, say, James Gunn, who was able to switch gears from the weird, violent likes of Slither and Super to the (mostly) all-audience charms of the Guardians Of The Galaxy trilogy (the third one is on the way in May), it might perhaps serve Landon better to focus on crazy, violent gorefests.
We Have A Ghost is on Netflix now.