Cocaine Bear (2023)

Bear Scat

Cocaine Bear should have been an outrageous, silly comedy film. It should have accepted the fact that it is a film loosely based upon an already insane true story and expanded that insanity to the Nth degree. It should have been full of practical effects that had audiences roll their eyes with joy. Instead, Cocaine Bear is a drawn out, boring, healthy budgeted film that missed every opportunity thrown at it. Yeah, as you can tell already, I didn’t care for this flick.

The film’s pencil-thin plot is split between a mother, portrayed by Keri Russell, trying to find her daughter and her daughter’s friend, and a duo of drug dealers, played by O’Shea Jackson, Jr. and Alden Ehrenreich, hunting down their missing cocaine which was tossed out of a plane over the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest by the pilot, Andrew Thornton (Matthew Rhys), before the plane crashes in Tennessee. There are also about fifty subplots including a horny ranger (Margo Martindale) that wants to bed a local wildlife activist named Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), the same ranger’s ongoing battle with a band of National Forest ruffians (yes, you read that correctly) known as the Duchamps, a policed detective named Bob (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and his hunt for the perfect dog and the missing cocaine, and a ton of other somehow intertwining subplots that are absolutely not necessary. Along for the ride is a black bear with a penchant for cocaine that will kill anybody that gets in the way of its blow.

The film is pieced together in amateur fashion by Elizabeth Banks. Banks, who has two other directorial runs under her belt (the decent Pitch Perfect 2 (2015) and the wretched Charlie’s Angels (2019)) doesn’t seem to understand what to do with the movie written by Jimmy Warden. At times it plays out as it should, with tons of silly violence featuring a bear amped up on cocaine, and at others it’s loaded with dull sequences full of dialogue and bad acting. The bear isn’t on the screen enough and even when it does appear it has to take a backseat to terrible performances by TikTok stars and futile attempts at humor. It’s just boring and bad.

Alden Ehrenreich and O’Shea Jackson, Jr. do turn in some pretty decent performances and actually have a few funny moments. The rest of the acting is just bad. It’s a shame that Ray Liotta passed away after the making of this film as he deserves a much better swansong than this pile of bear scat. Keri Russell is wasted as is Margo Martindale and everyone else in the film. It’s terrible. Seriously!

Do yourself a favor and skip this movie. It’s not so-terrible-it’s-funny nor is it scary enough to be a horror film. It’s a dud. If you want a better bear film I recommend 1976’s Grizzly. It’s terrible as well but at least the bear gets more screen time.

Thanks for reading my post. I promise I’ll be in a better mood next time I post!