Respond to these rapid questions in our Cocaine Bear quiz and we will tell you which Cocaine Bear character you are. Play it now.
There will be “Before” and “After” “Cocaine Bear.” This is how we will measure time as a community from now on. That is how powerful this film is.
Maybe it’s not that deep. But it’s an amazing experience, particularly if you get to see director Elizabeth Banks’ insanely violent comedy/thriller with a packed house. The shared experience is critical in this case. “Cocaine Bear” is going to bring folks together. “Cocaine Bear” is going to save film.
Because “Cocaine Bear” understands precisely what it is and what it needs to do. It’s about a bear who is high on drugs. With its high-concept, wild-animal premise and the giddy hype that accompanied it, comparisons to the 2006 disaster extravaganza “Snakes on a Plane” are unavoidable. Both films do exactly what their titles indicate, with no attempt to be more substantial or meaningful. The pacing begins to lag when “Cocaine Bear” injects even a small quantity of sentimentality. This is not why we’ve come. We’ve come to see a bear snort a bunch of cocaine before going on a murderous spree through the woods.
But you shouldn’t waste any more time and start this Cocaine Bear quiz.
One of the many bizarre aspects of Banks’ film is that it is based on a true tale. Jimmy Warden, a screenwriter, has taken the basic facts—a 175-pound Georgia black bear ingested cocaine that a drug smuggler dropped from an airplane in 1985—and imagined what might have happened if the bear hadn’t perished, but had instead sampled the substance and become addicted. A motley crew of hikers, rangers, criminals, and police agents have the misfortune of getting in her way. They get into trouble particularly when they cross her path when she’s looking for her next fix. (And lest you think this is an anti-drug movie with a preachy, puritanical message, think again; it includes a mocking montage of those 1980s “Just Say No” PSAs, including one from First Lady Nancy Reagan herself).
Cocaine Bear Quiz
“Cocaine Bear” starts in the excess of the period, with an unrecognizable Matthew Rhys maniacally dumping duffel bags of powder (and mixing in a line here and there) with the intent of retrieving them later. (Spoiler: He did not.) However, because they are scattered throughout Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest, several individuals go on the hunt for them. They are a mismatched pair of buddy drug dealers (Alden Ehrenreich and O’Shea Jackson Jr.); their humorless boss (Ray Liotta in his final film role, recalling one of his signature performances in “Goodfellas”); and a police detective from the Kentucky town where the smuggler’s plane eventually crashed. (Isiah Whitlock Jr., perfectly deadpan as ever).
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Cocaine Bear quiz.
A park ranger (a randy Margo Martindale) and a wildlife specialist (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) are also wandering around the woods that day, as are a bunch of doofus teenagers and a determined single mom (Keri Russell) looking for her 13-year-old daughter (Brooklynn Prince) and her daughter’s friend (Christian Convery), who skipped school to visit the falls. (Both kids are fantastic in a retro sense, evocative of the brash, profane characters seen in films like “The Bad News Bears” or “The Goonies.”) When the boy discovers one of these illegal bundles, his response is cheerful: “Let’s sell drugs together!”)
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Much of the fun of “Cocaine Bear” stems from the creature’s appearance, which is shockingly high-tech for a cheesy, silly film. She was brought to life by stuntman Allan Henry’s motion capture performance and CGI from the renowned New Zealand house Weta FX. They’ve certainly accelerated the movements and anthropomorphized the animal to an extreme, but they’ve achieved enough realism to make the bear’s assaults terrifying. Throughout, you’ll giggle and squeal, but you’ll also scream and squirm. The brutality is frequently graphic and gory. Some of the most heinous moments are caused not by the bear, but by everyone being stupid and finding other methods to get hurt.
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For this and many other reasons, you’ll almost certainly be cheering for the bear’s success. She’s giddy as she tears into brick after brick, getting a whiff of the white substance up her snoot. Her methods of ingesting cocaine are frequently quite inventive, such as doing a line off a limb she’s just severed. And one scene in particular, featuring the marauding bear, a fleeing ambulance, and Depeche Mode’s catchy “Just Can’t Get Enough,” is a pacing and tone masterclass. In terms of music, Mark Mothersbaugh’s soundtrack adds the ideal synth touch to these antics; similarly, the period-specific needle drops, costume, and production design are all spot-on without being obvious parodies. The posters that adorn the walls of the adolescent Prince are particularly inspired.
Because “Cocaine Bear” does what it does so well for so long, it’s a letdown when the filmmakers take a break from the action to make us care about these characters as individuals. Some of the supporting characters, such as Scott Seiss as a paramedic and Aaron Holliday as one of the obnoxious teenagers, develop in unexpected ways. While the suspense that carried the film for the first two-thirds of its brisk running time fades as the film nears its end, “Cocaine Bear” remains a hell of a high.
The film is currently showing in theaters.
