New & now: Cocaine Bear

I appreciate a movie that does exactly what it says on the tin.

It’s a bear. It’s on cocaine. Keri Russell is there too.

Where once they just little previews, a small taste to leave the audience wanting more, modern movie trailers now seem to be working actively against the best interests of what they’re trying to promote. If they’re not just outright misrepresenting what the movie is about¹, they’re either showing too much, or featuring scenes that mysteriously don’t end up in the final cut. When the trailer for Elizabeth Banks’s Cocaine Bear dropped, it was met with equal parts excitement and cynicism: surely the bear isn’t as big a part of the plot as it would appear. Surely the movie is about something else, and the bear is merely a small component of it.

I am thrilled to tell you that the sheer amount of cocaine bear action in Cocaine Bear has not been oversold. While there are human actors, and some of them even get to say things and do stuff, the bear is the star here, in a movie that accomplishes exactly what it set out to do, no more and no less. Reminiscent of goofy comedies of the 80s (without the casual racism and homophobia), it’s dumb fun that doesn’t overstay its welcome by so much as a minute.

I’d explain the plot, but it’s right there: it’s about a bear who does cocaine. There are no metaphors here: a bunch of cocaine is tossed out of a plane and lands all over a Georgia state park, a bear eats a brick of it and immediately becomes addicted, then goes on the hunt for more, while leaving a path of bloody destruction in its wake. The humans who get in its way (to occasionally horrifying results) include Alden Ehrenreich and O’Shea Jackson Jr. as a pair of lackeys working for drug kingpin Ray Liotta (in his final role, and what a spectacular way he goes out, god bless him), Keri Russell as a nurse searching for her missing daughter, and character actress Margo Martindale as a park ranger hoping to find love with a resident wildlife expert.

The film is paced well enough that you never find yourself wondering when the bear will show up again, and when she does it’s almost always with an outrageous payoff. One thing the trailer for Cocaine Bear undersells is how gory it is, even when it leans far more into comedy than horror. Fully half the cast ends up eaten, mauled, or disemboweled, and the camera doesn’t shy away, depicting it in glistening detail. One particularly gruesome scene, featuring TikTok comedian Scott Seiss², takes place in an ambulance, and is cartoonishly over the top. That it’s set to the bouncy beat of Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” puts a charmingly silly spin on the whole thing.

Though their characters are superfluous to the plot (let’s face it, all that’s required here is a bear and some cocaine), everyone involved is enthusiastic and entertaining, particularly Ehrenreich and Jackson, who have the kind of chemistry and repartee that make for a good buddy comedy. Another standout is Christian Convery as a friend of Russell’s daughter, who, rather than react in fear when he finds cocaine, enthusiastically suggests that they try to sell it. Given its opening montage and 1985 setting, Jimmy Warden’s script may also be trying to make a pointed statement about 80s anti-drug rhetoric, but it doesn’t quite flesh it out. That’s okay, though, it has a bear and cocaine, it doesn’t need anything else!

Perhaps in my impending decrepitude, I have become easier to please (as you will note, I also gave a positive review to M3GAN, which features a killer doll who does a little dance before chasing someone with a paper trimmer). I just think that when you go into a movie called Cocaine Bear, and it has lots of (a) cocaine, and (b) bear, you’re already looking a three star motion picture from the get-go. That it also features laughs, gore, and likable characters³ may not necessarily make it a classic for the ages, but it’s fun, and more importantly, it’s not a shameless waste of time and money for everyone involved (least of all me). Its release coincides with KFC announcing the temporary re-release of the Double Down, their controversial chicken sandwich that stretches the legal definition of a “sandwich.” Cocaine Bear and the Double Down are comparable: neither of them really justify their existence, and they’re almost certainly bad for you, but also maybe we need to lighten up and enjoy ourselves every now and then.

1. Perhaps the most egregious example of this in recent times is Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal, a very dark comedy about toxic masculinity that was marketed as a wacky romp about an incorrigible party girl who discovers that she can control a monster with her mind.

2. You know him, the guy who talks about working at IKEA. Now he’s in Cocaine Bear. The world is a strange place, my friends.

3. It also opens with Jefferson Starship’s “Jane,” a certified jam.