"Cocaine Bear" is Exactly What it Sounds Like
Bear do coke. Bear eat people.
Look, you don’t need my opinion to know whether or not you want to watch Cocaine Bear. Everything you need to know is in the title. Bear do cocaine. Bear go ballistic. Bear eat people on insane, drug-fueled rampage. If you’re into that, then go for it. You’ll probably get your money’s worth.
I’m not sure that I did. As much as I wanted to believe in Cocaine Bear, I can’t help but feel like it just wasn’t Cocaine Bear enough. I went into the film at least vaguely compelled by the B-movie conceit of a black bear tearing through human innards on Blood Mountain (no joke, it’s literally called Blood Mountain), but came out feeling like there wasn’t quite enough of the stupid. It isn’t that the film is lacking in bear-eat-human violence—there’s plenty of that—but rather that if I watch a movie with a title like Cocaine Bear, you better damn well reduce my brains to a liquefied, drug-addled mush. When I left the theater, I had far too many brain cells intact.
Then again, maybe it’s wrong to complain. Universal Studios approved a $30 million budget dedicated purely to ursine gore, and director Elizabeth Banks makes sure to spend every last penny on human dismemberment. The film is trying a little bit too hard to be Evil Dead 2—the best horror-comedy idiocy that has ever been—but at least it’s trying. It’s succeeding, too! Over this weekend, Cocaine Bear helped knock down Quantumania’s box office receipts from Marvel’s typical box-office dominance. (Think about that: A drugged-up bear is reasonably competing with a $200 million MCU blockbuster. A bad sign for Marvel, a good sign for bears.)
But anyway, Cocaine Bear: In 1985, drug dealer Andrew C. Thornton (a real dude, here played briefly by Matthew Rhys) throws cocaine out of a plane flying over the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, kicking and karate chopping the air as he does so. Then he jumps out of the plane, but not before slamming his forehead onto the roof the plane, tumbling downward. It’s a funny scene, among the film’s best, and gleefully ignores any questions about why a coked-up nutjob is jumping out of a moving aircraft. It’s beside the point: We now have coke in the forest, and a bear to sniff for it.
But a bear on cocaine needs people to mutilate, and Cocaine Bear is replete with a cast of very chewable character actors. First among them is Sari (Keri Russell), a single mother raising her daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince), who skips school with friend Henry (Christian Convery) to visit the forest waterfalls. Next we have Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), two drug dealers tasked with recovering the lost cocaine. There’s also dog-obsessed policeman Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr., who tragically does not get to deliver his iconic catchphrase), lovestruck Park Ranger Liz (renowned character actor Margo Martindale), and drug kingpin Syd (Ray Liotta, playing his final film role). None of them quite get the chance to shine in the way they deserve, since the onus is upon a CGI bear, but there’s no reason to think that both couldn’t coexist. All these names are genuine talents, and do a lot of the heavy lifting during some of the film’s cringier dialogue exchanges.
But, again, this is a movie about a bear on drugs. Actors don’t matter nearly as much as the beast that rips them apart, and rip them apart he does. There are some pleasurable enough instances of arms, legs, and guts being strewn about in various woodland settings, as well as the occasional entertaining standoff between cop and drug dealer, between bear cubs and a crazed Ray Liotta. The real highlight of the film comes in a setpiece involving an ambulance, a pistol, and our drug-addled bear running and jumping at speeds somehow approximating 60 mph. I won’t spoil it beyond that, but suffice to say it is far and away the most lizard-brain insanity that Cocaine Bear delivers, the ultimate instance of the film living up to the absurdity of its title.
I’m finding that the more that I write about this movie, the more I like it. I complained earlier about how the film wasn’t as full-on B-movie stupid as I’d like it to be, and this is still true: The bear isn’t as insane as you’d hope, the gore isn’t as creative nor disgusting it could be, the actors don’t get to exercise their full range of humor. But when I think about how a major Hollywood studio put up the money for a scene involving CGI bear tearing after an ambulance while a rabid Margo Martindale screams obscenities over pistol fire—well, that just warms my cold little heart.