Cocaine Bear Review: Embrace the lunacy

Director Elizabeth Banks and writer Jimmy Warden deliver precisely what you expect from a movie titled Cocaine Bear.

Cocaine Bear is an assortment of ideas. Some of these elements work better than others. After stealing a bunch of cocaine, a thief dies trying to parachute off the plane. The cocaine ends up spewing across the North George mountains. A black bear ingests the cocaine and carnage ensues.

There are elements of ’80s Amblin films with a pair of kids who decides to sneak out of school and a single mother (Kerri Russell) hot on their trail. Then there are the drug dealers (O’Shea Jackson, Alden Ehrenreich and Ray Liotta) trying to reclaim their products. There’s also a detective (Isaiah Whitlock Jr.) from Tennessee who spent his career chasing Syd (Liotta). Finally, there’s an all-white group of weak thieves and con men trying to steal from the forest ranger (Margo Martindale) while she tries to strike up a romance with Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson, hilarious).

The comedy works for the most part with Ferguson, Ehrenreich and Whitlock shining brightest. Whitlock’s attachment to his dog is hilarious. Ehrenreich’s take on a mopey drug dealer works well opposite Jackson. Ferguson steals the film as Peter. Not everything works in the comedy department. The dweeby con men grind the film to a halt every time they’re on screen.

Since Cocaine Bear leans into the absurd, the attempts at horror don’t really have much tension. However, Cocaine Bear makes up for the lack of tension with creative kills.

Where Cocaine Bear shines brightest is with carnage. Unlike the deaths in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, The deaths in Cocaine Bear are plentiful and every single kill is creative. Banks and Warden somehow toe the line perfectly between gore and comedy.

Banks and Warden succeed in creating a film that never takes things too seriously.

With the overview out of the way, let’s dive deeper into this drug-fueled romp. There may be some minor spoilers. Cocaine Bear is in theaters now.

Kids in Cocaine Bear

The con men are the weakest aspect of a movie that suffers from having too many characters. Banks and Warden do a good job of eventually tieing the drug dealers’ and kids’ plots together. However, the Cocaine Bear could have eliminated the dweeby con men and brought these two storylines together.

Sari (Russell) is a single mother to Dee Dee who decides to take an extra shift. She also reveals they’re taking a trip with Sari’s boyfriend to Nashville in lieu of painting the falls in the forest. In an act of rebellion, Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) decides to skip school with Henry (Christian Convery) her best friend.

Prince and Convery are terrific. In fact, they’re so good, you could have centered the whole film around them getting lost in the forest while a ravaging bear hunts them down. Russell is fine.

Drug Dealers

Meanwhile, Daveed (Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Ehrenreich) are sent by their boss Syd (Liotta) to retrieve the cocaine in the forest. Eddie’s sad-sack drug dealer is a great contrast to Daveed’s hardened, but sympathetic character.

Not exactly hot on their trail is Bob (Whitlock Jr.), a Nashville detective, who has been trying to nail Syd for much of his career. The square-off between Daveed, Eddie and Bob is one of the best scenes in the movie up until the most predictable twist is introduced.

The Bear

Banks does a great job utilizing the bear and coming up with unique deaths for each character.

The bear’s addiction to cocaine is the fuel that propels all of the carnage. Similar to a shark movie, if a character has cocaine near them, they’re going to die in a gruesome, gory fashion. The bear is the only character in the film who isn’t played for comedy except for when he’s ingesting cocaine. Once the cocaine is in the bear’s system, all hell breaks loose.

There’s a weird third-act addition involving the bear’s cubs, which should have been introduced earlier in the film. The cubs ingest cocaine, but for some reason retain their genial nature. In spite of the late addition, introducing the cubs does work in explaining why the bear doesn’t kill Dee Dee or Henry.

Cocaine Bear Final Thoughts

If you embrace the absurdity of a bear going on a drug-fueled rampage, there’s plenty to enjoy in Cocaine Bear.

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