Cocaine Bear is exactly what you want, need, and expect it to be. Director Elizabeth Banks assembled a cast willing to just go for it, and together they’ve delivered one of the funniest, most insane R-rated horror / comedy / thriller / crime caper / buddy comedy / cautionary tale / coming-of-age films in history. Of course, it helps that there are very few, if any, films that have dipped their toes into that many genres all at once and been successful while doing so.
Cocaine Bear’s very loosely inspired by a true story. Fact: In 1985, a 175-pound black bear, now lovingly referred to as Pablo Escobear, did ingest cocaine that had fallen from a plane. Fact: The bricks of cocaine tumbled into the bear’s path after drug smuggler Andrew Thornton (played by The Americans’ Matthew Rhys in a brief but memorable cameo) tossed them from a plane and then followed them out. His parachute never opened, and Thornton was found dead in a Knoxville, Tennessee neighborhood.
The film takes those basic facts and reimagines the bear as the hero of the story. Sure, she maims and kills a bunch of people, but is it her fault the coke fell into her lap? No, it’s not. And she’s a bear…she’s never heard about the dangers of doing drugs. Bears will eat pretty much anything, and who are we to say a bear wouldn’t sample coke, find it irresistible, and then dismember, decapitate, or slice and dice anyone who tries to take it away.
Among those who try and get between the 500-pound coke-fueled mama bear (brought to life via outstanding, nearly seamless CGI) are Keri Russell as Sari, a nurse and single mom; Brooklynn Prince as Dee Dee, her 12-year-old school-skipping daughter; and Christian Convery as Henry, Dee Dee’s best friend. Dee Dee and Henry head out to the falls, unaware a bear is high as a kite and bounding around the forest in a drug-crazed frenzy. Unlike most films, Dee Dee and Henry aren’t annoyingly precocious kids and instead, their actions – including their reaction to discovering a brick of cocaine – feel like something that could happen to any pre-teen trying to act tough around a friend.
Margo Martindale (Cocaine Bear’s a mini-The Americans reunion with Rhys, Russell, and Martindale) plays a Park Ranger who inadvertently shoots everything except the coke-powered bear. Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family) shows up to dispense details about bears that have no bearing (pun intended) on how you should approach one that’s tripping on cocaine.
Ray Liotta, in one of his final film roles, plays Syd, a drug kingpin who sends out his son, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) and Eddie’s friend, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), to fetch the missing cocaine. Eddie’s mourning the loss of his girlfriend and is nearly useless, while Daveed just wants to get it over with. All three wind up coming face-to-face with a manic bear, as does a dog-loving detective (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) hot on Syd’s trail.
A handful of other actors are tossed in as Cocaine Bear fodder, including Kristofer Hivju, Hannah Hoekstra, Kahyun Kim, J.B. Moore, and “Angry Retail Guy” Scott Seiss. Their deaths compete for the most gruesome title, with Moore just barely pulling ahead. But the real winner is the audience who are treated to some incredibly imaginative, wickedly funny yet shockingly grisly deaths.
You can’t stick Cocaine Bear in a box and tie it with a neat red bow. Jimmy Warden’s screenplay samples every genre except animation which, now that I’ve written that, I can see how he could have managed to sneak that in if he felt like it. I’d love to see what didn’t make the cut in his final draft. It’s probably better than the material that makes it into most R-rated comedies. Warden has a wild imagination, and in the hands of the incredibly talented Banks, Cocaine Bear is destined to become a cult classic.
The bottom line: Don’t do drugs, do indulge in Cocaine Bear.
GRADE: B+
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, drug content, and bloody violence and gore.
Release Date: Feb 24, 2023
Running Time: 1 hour 35 minutes
Studio: Universal Pictures
