Cast: Keri Russell (Sari), O’Shea Jackson Jr (Daveed), Christian Convery (Henry), Alden Ehrenreich (Eddie), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Peter), Brooklynn Prince (Dee Dee), Isiah Whitlock Jr (Detective Bob Springs), Kristofer Hivju (Olaf), Hannah Hoekstra (Elsa), Aaron Holliday (Stache), Margo Martindale (Ranger Liz), and Ray Liotta (Syd)
Director: Elizabeth Banks

Wait, so Cocaine Bear is directed by Elizabeth Banks? Boy, it’s a good thing that it made money and humiliated the MCU at the same time, or else she would be making the media rounds calling people bear-phobic for not watching this thing.

Then again, who can resist a cocaine bear anyway? Based on a true story, with creative liberties taken, of course, this one is about a black bear that, in 1985, eats a large amount of cocaine, courtesy of a drug smuggler trying to parachute down from a plane only to fall to his death, and goes on a nyom-nyom-nyom rampage.

Thrust into this chaos is Sari, a nurse whose young daughter Dee Dee and her friend Henry skip school to do some painting of a waterfall in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Yes, that’s where the cocaine bear makes its home. She and two park rangers Liz and Andrew make their way there to look for the two kids.

Also making their way there is Daveed, sent by the drug kingpin Syd, to retrieve the cocaine. Daveed is accompanied by Eddie, Syd’s depressed son that is probably still not over Solo: A Star Wars Story tanking and killing a franchise completely. Detective Bob Springs overhears them discussing their trip, so he decides to tag along too.

You know, I have high hopes for this film, only to have them all plummet right down into my gut when scene immediately after the opening credits lets me know right away that this is going to be a comedy instead of a slasher movie.

Then I see that adorable bear smashing its head against a tree before doing the combat pose of that Kuma from the Tekken games and I’m won over. Go kill, cute bear—kill, kill, kill!

Indeed, the bear rampage is the best thing about this movie, which is actually a very standard movie of this kind with a central core cast of stereotypical characters: two obnoxious kids that exist solely to get into trouble and necessitate a rescue mission that gets a few people killed, the single mom that turns out to be the strong lead character, the bumbling older coots that should have retired ages ago, and the black guy. Oh, and the bad guy that has a showdown with the bear only to get wrecked.

The forgettable human characters hog a lot of the screen time, which becomes an issue because I want to see them get violated and eviscerated by the cute bear. Who cares about Eddie ugly-crying over his dead wife? I don’t even know why he’s in the movie, as his character can be easily taken out without affecting the rest of the movie much.

While it is cute to see Daveen kick ass instead of being the typical sassy big-sized black comic relief, his antics become repetitive after a while. Sari has no personality apart of “I’m looking for my idiot daughter!”, and the ever-reliable late Ray Liotta isn’t in this movie much to chew scenery to a significant degree.

Also, the kills are iffy. There are scenes when the humans are tossed around in a way that is only possible if the bear could become invisible to sneak up on people, and I really doubt cocaine is that amazing. Nothing is truly graphic here; while there is some occasional pretty mild gore, most of the kills take place off-screen, with the bear thoughtfully dragging its victim out of view so that this movie won’t be scary.

I mean, who wants a movie about a killer bear to be scary, right? The very idea!

Also, I’m certain they use the same dismembered leg prop a few times in this movie, heh.

Well, on the bright side, some of the comedy works. The cute bear taking out three idiots in an ambulance is the perfect mix of comedy and gore, how adorable.

Still, in the end I feel that this movie has a serious identity crisis. It wants to have a killer bear in its core, but it shoves the bear out of the way to focus on ha-ha-ha’s that are hits and misses. The characters are all forgettable and some should have been just removed from the movie entirely, but here they are, hogging way too much of the movie.

Because of this, Cocaine Bear is neither funny nor scary in a way that is memorable. As a result, I don’t think people will consider this one a cult classic like Grizzly or Prophecy. It’s more of a middling TV movie masquerading as something far more interesting than it actually is.