‘Cocaine Bear’ an unfunny tale of bruin’s road to ruin
What is the comic potential of a film about a wild forest creature sadly addicted to a powerful drug much abused by humans? Judging by “Cocaine Bear,” a film driven by both novelty and notoriety, the answer is, not much. We’re in Georgia’s Chattahoochee National State Forest for much of the action (principal photography took place in County Wicklow, Ireland). It’s 1985, the year the real version of these fictionalized events happened. The actual event involved a 175 lbs. black bear that ingested cocaine dropped into the woods by a smuggler whose plane was too heavily laden. The poor bear died.
The bear in cocaine bear is CG and looks like it weighs more than 500 lbs. It goes on an inevitable splatter-movie rampage. It begins with two European hikers who stop to take the sick bear’s picture.
Also in immediate danger are two children Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince, “The Florida Project”) and Henry (a very good Christian Convery, “Sweet Tooth”), who discover a brick of cocaine and put some in their mouths.
Margo Martindale plays the armed forest ranger Ranger Liz, who goes into the woods to find this film’s drug-addled standin for the Big Bad Wolf. Accompanying her is Jesse Tyler Ferguson of TV’s “Modern Family,” sporting a grotesque wig as some sort of oddball nature lover with a weird accent, who refuses to believe that a black bear can go on a rampage, ho-hoho. Isiah Whitlock Jr. of “Da 5 Bloods” is also on board as a dog-loving police detective on the trail of the drugs.
The cast is a strange mix of D-listers, talented newcomers and respected veterans such as Keri Russell as Dee Dee’s mother Sari, who is a nurse. Unfortunately for him, “Cocaine Bear” is the final film appearance of the late Ray Liotta to whom the film is dedicated, a not very enviable honor.
Sporting a golden mane of hair and a tired-looking expression, a typecast Liotta plays a vicious drug dealer Syd, who unhappily babysits for his grandson and rides his ne’er-dowell son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) hard to go the forest and collect as many duffel bags of coke as he and his companion Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) can find. Before he starts doing that, tough guy Daveed encounters three hooligans in a Chattahoochee men’s room. Daveed is very particular about his jersey and his kicks and hates to get blood on either.
Scripted by Jimmy Warden, whose credits include the 2020 McG-directed Netflix film “The
Babysitter:” Killer Queen,” and directed by Pitsfield’s own Elizabeth Banks (“Charlie’s Angels”), “Cocaine Bear” is a predictable collection of scenes of the drug-crazed bear making gruesome, sadistic and supposedly comical attacks on unsuspecting and/or brainless humans in the forest. Russell
is reliably likable. But the movie is a “Friday the 13th” film with a CG bear standing in for Jason Voorhees. Even at 95 minutes, it becomes tedious and at times nonsensical. In one scene, Banks recreates the famous bit involving a raptor from “Jurassic Park.” We’re supposed to be amused by a tiny, furball
show dog that Whitlock’s Detective Bob hopes to exchange for something more manly. In “Cocaine Bear,” the answer to the proverbial question — What does a bear do in the woods? — is coke.
(“Cocaine Bear” contains extreme, gory violence, drug content and profanity)