A great title goes a long way. The minute Elizabeth Banks finished a cappella’ing and heard the story about a botched 80s coke drop that a bear got into, bam! Cocaine Bear was forged in the woods of Appalachia with Keri Russel, hubby Matthew Rhys, Isaiah Whitlock Jr., O’Shea Jackson Jr., Young Han Solo. And the dearly departed Ray Liotta, which trivia buffs will now have to remember that the great actor’s last movie was, in fact, about a bear on cocaine. JA Goodfellas full circle.
This story occurred in the 1980s, where Elizabeth Banks transports us. The botched coke drop for US Kingpin Syd (Ray Liotta) in Tennessee leaves all sorts of kilos of cocaine all over the forest. Syd deploys loyal follower Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) to get Syd’s morose son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) and go pick up the drugs. Hot on their tail is detective Bob (Isaiah Whitlock Jr.), following Syd’s movements for a bit now. Unprepared for the drug dealers’ arrivals are the park ranger Liz (Margo Martindale), who’s too busy trying to flirt with local nature buff Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). And Sari (Keri Russell), a local mom who realizes her teenage daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) has skipped school with her friend Henry (Christian Convery) and gone into the forest. On top of all these shenanigans, none of them are prepared for, you know, a bear super duper high on cocaine.
I wonder if this movie ran out of CGI bear money. With a title like Cocaine Bear, your crazy action sequences better bring something fun to the table. There are a couple wonderful standouts the trailer shows pieces of: one involving a car chase and one involving a Mexican standoff situation. In addition, Banks does give us a couple great “Popeye” type moments where the bear snorts cocaine and becomes essentially a supervillain to the audience’s delight. But otherwise? Bear action runs out of steam by the end. Banks and writer Jimmy Warden maybe have a few too many good actors here that get their necessary screen time, keeping us away from the star of the show: a bear on effing cocaine.
At least the actors really try to lean into what they’re asked to do. Isaiah Whitlock Jr. throws himself headfirst into his weird subplot getting a fru fru type dog he acts like he doesn’t want but secretly does. Keri Russell is doing the hero mom thing, playing it straight while she finds out that maybe her daughter or Henry have done cocaine. Margo Martindale trying to flirt with Jesse Tyler Ferguson is wonderfully strange. But maybe the MVP is the much maligned Alden Ehrenreich. He knows exactly what movie he’s in, playing a forlorn lovesick reluctant drug dealer; maybe the funniest non bear moment is him and O’Shea Jackson Jr. just shooting the sh*t in the car.
B movie creature features, when done right, are just a rollicking good time beginning to end. Cocaine Bear is going for something like Crawl or Piranha 3D. And lands somewhere a notch below those movies. Maybe because this movie needs more of a horror director than a comedy one. Cocaine Bear in Alexandre Aja’s hands? Now that bear is doing all sorts of memorable sh*t! And we’re probably on spring break in Tennesse somewhere!