Cocaine Bear

A bear finds a stash of lost cocaine in a national park and wreaks havoc. The third instalment of the Paddington franchise.

The absurd premise suckered me in and sure enough it’s fairly amusing, but one can’t help but think this should have been a lot funnier. The gorier elements of it are hit and miss, verging on clumsy poor-taste rather than shock-comedy. There’s a pretty good ambulance sequence where the coked up bear is chasing the van, but most of the film is strangely humourless.

The script really lets the whole thing down, lumbering it with way too many sub-plots and side characters for a 90-minute comedy. Plus, none of it really comes together all that neatly at the end.

A bit like this review, it feels like a first draft in need of a re-write.