Cocaine Bear: Definitely Don't Go Out in the Woods Today
By John Kirk
Rating: A-
In the footsteps of Seth McFarlane's Ted, Kung-Fu Panda, and of course, the venerable Fozzie himself, there is now another addition to the august company of distinguished, fictional bears to laugh at.
She’s Cocaine Bear, savage, murderous and high as a kite.
... And she's real.
Well, loosely inspired by real events. And, in the credits, you will notice the disclaimer. But the film’s freakish premise has bear-hugged moviegoers’ attention and clawed and fanged its way into popular culture; all while running an entire kilogram brick of uncut cocaine into its system. It’s so ridiculous a story that it works with audiences willing to suspend their disbelief.
Keri Russell and Cocaine Bear in a deadly pas de deux
This dark comedy, co-produced and directed by Elizabeth Banks, is a non-stop ride. Complete with gore, sick humour and characters (including the bear) that quickly attach themselves to the audience, this film satisfies so many low-end viewing pleasures that it’s a film you want to see again just to confirm that yes, that WAS indeed what you just saw.
For instance, for some of us, seeing a black bear snort a line of coke off the shin of a severed leg definitely demands a second viewing.
Our story starts with a 1980’s hair-metal chart-topper, blasting at full volume accompanying the scene of an open-doored airplane flying overhead. Inside we see who we come to know as rogue Narcotics Agent, Andrew C. Thornton (Matthew Rhys) throwing karate kicks and duffel bags filled with cocaine bricks out into the Chattahoochee National Park in Georgia.
Odd as it may seem, Thornton was an actual narcotics agent gone bad. He was also a lawyer who headed up his own drug gang called “The Company”. Another piece of extreme reality that was so outlandish but true that it got its own story.
While the cocaine is scattered around the forest, a bear ingests the cocaine, sending it into a drug-fuelled frenzy looking for more and ready to maul anything that stands in its way.
In real life, the 175-pound black bear died after eating all the cocaine it could find. Its body was preserved and put on display in a local mall, where it was unsurprisingly dubbed the “Cocaine Bear.”
There is a thoroughly odd mix of storylines that follows three groups of characters who encounter the bear.
The first is a couple of oddball criminals who are tasked by a local drug lord, Syd Dentwood (Ray Liotta, in one of his last performances), to recover as much of the missing cocaine as possible. Daveed and Eddie (O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Alden Ehrenreich) make their way into the woods, only to experience a series of hilarious encounters with other denizens in the forest that almost make the audience forget there is a coked-up apex predator on the loose hunting for the exact thing that they are looking as well.
The second is a Mom named Sari (Keri Russell) out searching for her wayward and truant daughter, Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and her friend Henry (Christian Convery), who’d both decided to skip school and have fun in the woods. Of course, they too, run afoul of the bear. Combine scattered packages of cocaine against background media images of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No to Drugs” campaign and the jokes pretty much write themselves.
Finally, we encounter Ranger Liz played by the veteran screen actor, Margo Martindale
. She has her own wacky storyline with three juvenile delinquents who also discover some of the scattered cocaine bricks around the forest. In another article about the film, Martindale lamented that at age 70, she didn’t expect to be doing stunts. Of course, she had a stunt double, but this gives you an idea of the random nature of the comedy when a 70-year-old park ranger is called into physical action and gunplay. Martindale's antics are some of the funniest moments in the film.
There are the interstitial characters, like Game of Thrones' Kristofer Hivju who plays a Scandinavian tourist in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hivju has an innate sense of comedic farce that becomes apparent in this role.
But we can't leave out the Bear. Seeing the CGI bear range from fits of bestial rage to moments of extreme giddiness and pharmaceutical joy is entertaining and understandable. The abject ridiculousness of the situation allows the audience a sense of empathy for the creature. Eventually, the audience (the one I was in, anyway) ends up cheering for the bear.
When all these storylines and odd characters intersect, the film becomes a hot, comfort-food mess of every conceivable thriller and comedy technique. Shock value, jump scares and just plain silliness, it's like a jumbo-sized tuna melt of gore and humour. Seldom, if ever, has an audience laughed so hard in unison at injury, dismemberment and senseless animal savagery, because the whole premise is just ridiculous. That's what makes the story work overwhelmingly well.
We can laugh, because despite its murderous rage and trail of bodies in its wake, Cocaine Bear is no monster.
She just needs another hit, man.
Cocaine Bear. Directed and produced by Elizabeth Banks. Starring Keri Russell, Ray Liotta and Margo Martindale.
Cocaine Bear releases in theatres, February 24th.