Cocaine Bear: A Waste of Pixels

 

 

Cocaine Bear (2023)

Directed by Elizabeth Banks

Universal Pictures, 95 minutes, R (extreme gore)

★

 

Go ahead. Bring it on. I’m sure somebody reading this review will tell me I’m making too much of a spoof. Nonetheless, I declare Cocaine Bear the undisputed worst movie of 2023 and a strong contender for the worst of the century. This comedy/horror film is as broad as bear’s butt, as dumb as cracked bowling ball, and as poorly acted as a hippo performance of Shakespeare.

 

It is loosely–as in looser than a sumo wrestler onesy on Kate Moss–based on an event in 1985 in which former narcotics agent turned drug smuggler Andrew Thornton II tossed 175 pounds of wrapped cocaine out of a plane into the mountains of Kentucky and Georgia. He either parachuted or fell to his death. His body was discovered, but not the drugs. Several months later a dead 175-pound black bear was discovered, its stomach loaded with cocaine (though, oddly, not much was found in the bloodstream). Unlike the movie, no deaths were associated with the bear. In the movie, quite a few human are torn apart, including a man beheaded and another disemboweled. I suspect a few acting careers also perished as a result of Cocaine Bear.

 

In this waste of pixels, the coked-up bear’s first victim is a female hiker whose leg is torn off and is partially eaten, though her wounded male fiancée manages to crawl away. In nearby Georgia, Sari (Keri Russell), a nurse, disappoints her middle school daughter Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince). Because she has to work, she can’t take Dee Dee to paint a waterfall. A miffed Dee Dee decides to cut school with her school friend Henry (Christian Convey) and find the waterfall themselves. They too will run into the bear.

 

Everybody in this movie has a bear encounter of some sort.  Drug lord Syd White (the late Ray Liota) orders his enforcer Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) to go look for the coke. A pit stop at the ranger’s station leads to a confrontation with the Duchamps gang, three punks just dying to have their own bear encounters. Let’s toss in Daveed’s sidekick Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) who is mourning his wife’s recent death; plus-sized Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) trying to put the moves on “wildlife activist” Peter, who wouldn’t know a chipmunk from a Benedictine monk; Bob (Isaiah Whitlock Jr.), a police officer with a prissy dog; and two terrified ETs. Will anyone survive the ravenous bear who needs more and more cocaine? Better question: Will any viewers survive this insult to their intelligence?

 

You could call this one “Hillbilly Bear” or “Deliverance II With Bruin.” Director Elizabeth Banks had to cheek to label her movie the actual Cocaine Bear’s vengeance. I hope she was joking. You name the cliché and Cocaine Bear has it. Cuddly cubs. Check. Stupid criminals. Check five times. A double cross. Semi-check as the actress who plays that role doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page and only quarter crosses. (Okay, only an eighth.) A dopehead who is even dumber when he’s sober. Check. Insufferable children. Two more checks. Dialogue and acting as stiff as a cleric’s collar. Check. Surviving a leap that no one could. Why not? A bad guy’s demise. Do we care?

 

You might notice that you’ve never or barely heard of the actors other than Liotta–what a horrible legacy for a fine talent–and Russell, who has been in a few good roles and quite a few bad ones. The best that can be said of this role is that I’m sure Russell didn’t exhaust her acting chops. The two child actors might wish to focus on their education. This movie stinks worse than a bear’s cave. It’s way too inept to be camp. Worst of all, everything is telegraphed, so as horror films go, it’s grisly (grizzly?) but not scary. 

 

Poor Cocaine Bear. The real one I mean. As if it’s not a big enough insult to make her into a murderer, the real bear was stuffed by a taxidermist and put on display at “fun mall” in Lexington, Kentucky. Apparently she has the power to marry people under a weird Kentucky law that says if two people “believe” an officiant has the power to entwine them, their nuptials are legal. You can’t make it up.  

 

Rob Weir