Cocaine Bear Review

Don't think I've ever felt more alienated from my friends than when I pitched watching Cocaine Bear and found no takers.

"But... but... it's about a bear that ...does ...cocaine!"

Still no.

I went by myself, wondering what sort of joyless person says no to watching a Big Black Bear gorge on five-pound bags of coke and go on blood-soaked rampages. Yes, such A-rated entertainment seems incredibly stupid at first, but just let it sit with you and it starts to sound more plausible than [insert every Marvel movie premise here].

Besides, Cocaine Bear actually happened in real life - well, kinda. In 1985, a black bear in Georgia died from having ingested ungodly amounts of coke from a duffel bag that fell out of the sky (a drug-smuggling plane dropping off excess weight). The media dubbed it "Pablo Eskobear".

Whether this real-life bear humped trees, chased butterflies or ripped apart humans limb-by-limb in the aftermath of its headrush is a mystery, but it's how Hollywood imagines and immortalizes it in Cocaine Bear. In this whacky comedy directed by Elizabeth Banks, a black bear high on coke chases after a group of people in search of its next hit. There is a hiker couple ripped apart (literally) on their romantic holiday; a cop and a band of smugglers that get into a three-way showdown with the beast for the last remaining supply of the Powder; a mother in search of her lost kids. There are forest rangers, EMTs and skinheads. An endless stream of characters walk into the story, and straight into the jaws of the bear. (The cast list - Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr, Christian Convery, Brooklynn Prince, Kristofer Hivju, Hannah Hoekstra, Jesse Tyler Fergusson, Margo Martindale, Alden Ehrenreich, Ray Liotta, Isiah Whitlock Junior, Scott Seiss - is long enough to make your eyes bleed.)

The gore is fun at first - if seeing severed limbs and bitten asses is your idea of fun. But the joke gets old especially as Banks' direction strips the movie of any suspense. What Banks seems to forget is that an audience crazy enough to come to watch Cocaine Bear, wants little else than to see the ravaging beast in all its glorious forms. No one cares about the secret infatuation shared by the forest rangers, or the relationship dynamics between the father-son smuggler duo. An extended gag about a cop and his Shih Tzu pup falls flat.

As much as I cheered for the movie at the beginning, I was bored and unimpressed by the end. Not even its A-grade cast - Keri Russell stands out in a pink jumpsuit that makes her look like a to-go box from a fancy bakery, Ray Liotta plays a ruthless smuggler in one of his last roles before his passing in May 2022, Margo Martindale is a bumbling forest ranger - could elevate it from being squarely B-grade.

All the humour of Cocaine Bear is ironically found everywhere but in the movie. The trailer, for example, is hilarious - it has the movie's best bits. And there are some great memes, tweets and Youtube Shorts about Cocaine Bear that are far more fun.

Even with its instantly-viral title, ridiculous premise and lots of gratuitous violence, I find it hard to imagine that Cocaine Bear achieves any level of cult status, due to its weak script and poor direction. But I will contend that the idea behind the movie is still a goldmine. Perhaps we will see a Cocaine Bear Cinematic Universe take shape - one populated by drug-crazed animals. Penguins on Molly. Kangaroos dropping Acid. Raccoons on Hash. Perhaps something directed by M Night Shyamalan? Or Tarantino? One can only hope. For the record, this is the only kind of Cinematic Universe I am interested in.