After directing My Movie Project, Pitch Perfect 2 and Charlie's Angel, actress and director Elizabeth Banks is back behind the camera for a fourth time in a completely different register with Crazy Bear. Worn by Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), the feature film also marks the last appearance of the late Ray Liotta. Adapted from a true story, Crazy Bear tells how, in 1985, a shipment of cocaine disappears in the middle of the forest after a plane crashes in the state of Georgia. A certain amount of the famous drug was then ingested by a brown bear. Criticism of a funny and mischievous work, which nevertheless lacks madness…
Crazy Bear: we have fun (almost) like crazy
After films rather mainstream, Elizabeth Banks embarked on the realization of a horror comedy brainless with Crazy Bear. Already, just his starting premise promises an eccentric, offbeat and totally what the fuck. Unfortunately, the promise is only half kept… Creazy Bear's great strength is its willingness not to take itself seriously. Elizabeth Banks signs an unpretentious B series, often very stupid, but also sometimes very funny. Crazy Bear offers some great comic and visual flashes. And three sequences undeniably stand out. 
Already, we have an opening scene with great pomp that sets the tone of the work. Funny, offbeat, happily naïve, and quite gore, the opening sequence is a great little sweet. Then, it is difficult not to be delighted by the excellent sequence of the ambulance, which perfectly combines black humor, trashy visions and violence both shocking and uninhibited. Finally, the carousel scene is so stupid that it is gently funny. And we would have liked the film to be like these three scenes that do not survive compared to the rest, but this is not the case. Crazy Bear can also count on some rather convincing characters. The dynamic between the two outlaws, played by O'Shae Jackson Jr. and Alden Ehrenreich, is the main force of the film. Endearing and very human, their questions about what is right, depression and friendship, although very classic, are enough to create a form of empathy that saves the film from total disinterest in its characters.
A proposal that lacks madness
Paradoxically, despite a funny and eccentric starting premise, Crazy Bear lacks madness. Elizabeth Banks signs a proposal too wise, and especially too talkative to totally convince. The director takes too much time to set up her issues, which are very simplistic. Faced with this excess of exposure, and a global rhythm that skates severely, the audience is sometimes gently shit in front of the very routine peregrinations of functional and extremely traditional characters. Crazy Bear lacks originality, expression, and especially irreverence to tell this tale of a bear stoned with cocaine. A bear sometimes too absent from the story. Almost presented as a secondary character, his absence is heavy, and he deserved more screen time. Especially since it is eclipsed in favor of a terribly boring subplot between two kids lost in the forest, and a mother ready to do anything to find her daughter. The worst element of Crazy Bear, this part of the story takes up far too much space compared to the interest it releases. 
Finally, difficult to validate the last part of the feature film. Elizabeth Banks locks herself into a sloppy and uninteresting narnardesque conclusion, where, without really understanding why, the characters are afflicted with a mind-boggling stupidity… Thus, even if it is overall endearing, and that three totally brainless scenes survive compared to the rest, Crazy Bear is paradoxically too wise and too talkative to totally convince. Too bad, because the initial premise proposed a most delusional concept… https://youtu.be/zSXMLBSUMr8
