The Riddle of the Crazy Bear
“As sadistic as it is joyful“(Here is “a great surprise” (Widescreen), “good bad idea“(Le Monde) and”holy waste“(First), to say so is an understatement Crazy Bear, the crazy comedy about a bear on cocaine – a story inspired by true events! -, was received very differently by everyone when it was released in French cinemas in March 2023. Cocaine bear (on VO) however made a brief and perfectly anecdotal appearance, although it had benefited from solid word of mouth prior to its release.
And a year later, just added to Netflix, we still don’t know in which category to place Elizabeth Banks’ film, her third directorial work after Perfect intonation 2 AND Charlie’s Angels. Success or failure? Funny or sad?
Cops, criminals, tourists and teenagers converge in the heart of a forest deep in Georgia, towards the place where an enraged and bloodthirsty super predator of over 200 kilos is hiding, driven completely mad by ingesting a huge dose of cocaine fell from the sky…
A satisfactory box office
Considering the overall box office performance, Crazy Bear it’s a success for a film that wants to become part of cinema type. In fact she reported $88 million in the world. While her performance disappointed internationally, where she grossed only $23.6 million, she performed well at the North American box office with Raised 64.6 million dollars. On a production budget estimated between 30 and 35 million, the accounts therefore appear in the green.
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For comparison, and even if this wasn’t a comedy, To crawl by Alexandre Aja, for example, had been more successful internationally with 52.5 million dollars in revenue than at the domestic box office where it had only “grossed” $39 million revenues in 2019. To crawl does a little better than Crazy Bear, so much so that its production cost 17 million dollars. This, however, is not the case Beast starring Idris Elba, released in 2022, and grossing just $59 million at the worldwide box office on a production budget of approximately $36 million.
The tusk between two chairs?
There was a time when Cocaine bear would undoubtedly have found a place more easily in cinema and in the hearts of the public. The time of the 80s and 90s, when under the names of series B and series Z a whole production of films flourished with a unleashed animal that caused chaos, on the big cinema screen as well as on DTV and whose grotesque and bad taste as traps, but rather the opportunity to have fun and laugh with every bite of fang.
But Crazy Bearreleased widely in theaters in 2023 and whose art direction and photography remain conventional, it seems to have the ambition to satisfy fans hardcore of this type, for his debauchery blood and its bearing in substance, that a profane public. Who prefers to find what he is looking for in the numerous simplistic subplots that dilute the radical part slasher animal.
This middle ground so tarnished the reception of the film, which went unnoticed in France only with 102,211 spectators in the rooms. It will also go by the wayside on Netflix, where it was added June 15or on the contrary convince and climb into the Top 10 to join the shark of Under the Seine ? Reply soon.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
