Cocaine Bear

Upcoming film Cocaine Bear arrives in cinemas tomorrow and the director shares how the bear was created in collaboration with visual effects company Weta.

"[It was a] blow by blow of the gore. "I'm a director and directors like to have a sense of control over the material – and it was really scary to me. [subscribe now](http://radiotimes.com/magazine-subscription?utm_term=evergreen-article). Wondering what to watch on TV? Cocaine Bear is released in cinemas on Friday 24th February 2023. I said this has to look like we've made a documentary of this bear. And luckily, Weta came through with flying colours." Meanwhile, star Keri Russell said that the cast had nicknamed the bear 'Cokie' on set – and she added that she was able to draw on her previous experience working with Weta a few years ago, when she had a role in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. "And he's also a stunt performer – so there was never a moment on set where if the actors were meant to be encountering the bear that we did not have Allan Henry there for everyone to have an eyeline, a physical something to push against. Banks added that although there was no bear actually present on set, she did utilise an "incredible bear performer" named Allan Henry – a veteran of the Planet of the Apes films – to help her block the action. I really had to trust Weta, who were great partners, and trust that the resources were going to be there [and] that the bear was going to be photorealistic." "I was about to embark on making a movie where the central character was never going to be on set, and I was going to have no control over it," she said.

Elizabeth Banks says that 'Cocaine Bear,' which she directed, and produced with Brownstone cofounder Max Handelman, is a direct line from 'Wet Hot American ...

“As a female filmmaker, and someone with a company that cares about centering female stories, I felt like I was being put in this box of ‘She’s got a feminist manifesto at the center of everything.’ And I just wanted to just remind people, ‘You don’t know me! “That to me was the crux of this opportunity—and to show off a little bit.” “It was impossible to know what the reaction to Cocaine Bear would be,” he says. The fact that she directed the film might even be a surprise to many of those millions of people who watched the trailer. “I do bring a lot of experience to the table—I’m not floundering around.” Even in that regard, it’s easy for Hollywood to lean on blockbuster superhero movies or other franchises that have a proven track record of pulling people into theaters. “It’s been a chaotic past several years that has hovered over our entire country and culture,” Handelman says. But when Thornton jumped out of the plane, his parachute malfunctioned, and he fell to his death on a driveway in a residential neighborhood in Knoxville, Tenn. A film as outlandish as Cocaine Bear is truly best experienced in a theater full of strangers. “In the true story, the bear dying is really sad. But I’m slowly becoming more confident that people are going to like it.” All she would tell me is that the premise was exactly what you’d expect from the title.

Cocaine Bear director Elizabeth Banks has packed a surprise for everyone in the film, especially for her mom.During an interview with Variety, “no one knows ...

She will laugh, and she’s going to love Margo Martindale and Isiah Whitlock Jr, and the dog. “I told her she’s going to be mad. “My poor mother is the least informed,” she continued.

Universal Pictures was willing to take a chance on a screenplay with an outrageous premise: a bear running wild on cocaine.

Elizabeth Banks is worried about how her mother and aunts will react when they watch her movie 'Cocaine Bear' for the first time.

But the nominally horror aspects are more than offset by the uproariously comedic. Joining director Elizabeth Banks is a ragtag ensemble of Keri Russell, Alden ...

A junkie bear is definitely smarter than your average bear. Of course, the details have been extravagantly exaggerated. Found near him were containers of cocaine dumped from a plane by a smuggler who was going down.

NEW YORK — On Dec. 22, 1985, The Associated Press reported the following from Blue Ridge, Georgia:

“For the scale of that movie, it’s a huge hit. The risk was: I was never going to have the lead character of the movie on the set of the movie,” Banks says. Lord points to the Academy Awards favorite “Everything Everywhere All at Once” as recent proof. “Cocaine Bear” is here to party. Nothing, it turned out, could cut through all the noise like “Cocaine Bear.” “That was the goal.” “Cocaine Bear” is here to be bold. “We thought at some point, someone was going to say, ‘Well you can’t call it ‘Cocaine Bear.’ You have to call it ‘A Walk in the Woods.’” It just means you have to swing the bat a little harder,” Lord says. At a time when much in Hollywood can feel pre-packaged, the makers of “Cocaine Bear” think it can be an untamed exception. Yes, “Cocaine Bear” is a real movie. “Then when you hear the word ‘Bear,’ you’re like: I’m all in.”

The fact that so many movie-goers are so excited for its arrival just underscores one thing: People just love goofy horror movies. Especially if they have bears ...

The bear in question — listed in the credits as “Blue” — is by far the best actor in the cast. Because we like to assume the best in people, we trust that director David DeCoteau and writer Arne Olsen did their homework and came up with a film that is as accurate as possible to normal bear behavior. Still, we were a bit surprised to learn in this film that bears are known to repeatedly headbutt cars and toss their intended victims large distances. Yet, don’t let any of that stop you from watching the actors — who alternate between robotic rigidity and zealous overacting — in this tale of a 4×4 trip gone incredibly wrong. And, as shocking as it may sound, that turns out to be a very bad idea. Or you can straight to the sequel, which might make Part 1 seem like “Citizen Kane” in comparison. The mutant bear creature will bring true joy to those of us who grew up enjoying the guys-in-rubber-suits era of monster movies from the ’50s and ’60s. Fans who can’t wait that long — and, yes, we are looking at you in the “Basket Case” T-shirt — can watch one of the many “early” screenings on Feb. And, believe it or not, it features three (at the time) little-known actors by the names of Charlie Sheen, George Clooney and Laura Dern. Sure, the 2015 Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle does include a bear scene, but it also won multiple Oscars — thereby assuring that no self-respecting bad-horror-comedy fan would ever want to see it. Jackson film “Snakes on a Plane” in 2006. The buzz is reminiscent of what we saw way back with the Samuel L.

Cocaine Bear screenwriter Jimmy Warden says he's already toying with the idea of sequels (plural!) to the stimulant-fueled thriller.

creating a photo-realistic, drugged-out black bear) and a script that early on sees two 12-year-olds dare each other to try cocaine, Warden said he didn’t exactly expect this project to get the studio treatment. “Cocaine Bear in Space is where we would probably end.” “I think that is a story that we can continue to tell over and over again. What happened is a product of circumstance and everybody else’s poor decisions,” Warden explains. In fact, he tells Based on a true story, Elizabeth Banks’ latest directorial effort

Elizabeth Banks told Insider she took out a violent scene because she didn't want people to "throw up" leaving the theater.

And don't worry horror fans, there's more than enough gore in the movie. It's coming to a close, and I wanted people to leave happy and not be freaking out and wanting to throw up." "We also filmed his death, but I took it out."

The parachutist, a former Kentucky narcotics investigator, had fallen to his death in a backyard in Knoxville, Tennessee. His unmanned airplane crashed into a ...

“The issue of the Ainu was seen as a taboo, something that should not be touched.” That was in 2009, just a year after Japan’s parliament finally passed a resolution to recognize the Ainu as an indigenous people, following decades of pressure. “Imagine if The Banshees of Inisherin had a big bear just running through biting that guy’s fingers off.” “For the scale of that movie, it’s a huge hit. The risk was: I was never going to have the lead character of the movie on the set of the movie,” Banks says. “We thought at some point, someone was going to say, ‘Well you can’t call it Cocaine Bear.’ You have to call it ‘A Walk in the Woods.’” After an initial taste, the bear goes after more cocaine with all the zeal of Yogi pursuing a picnic basket. It just means you have to swing the bat a little harder,” Lord says. “What’s funny is that we thought it would be difficult because of the subject matter. “That was the goal.” “You have to demonstrate theatricality to get the greenlight. “I’m the bear who ate cocaine,” reads one of the film’s official tweets. The movie, itself, is like a meme sprung to life — a kind of spiritual heir to Snakes on a Plane crossed with a Paddington Bear fever dream.

TikTok star Scott Seiss, who also appears in Cocaine Bear, trolls the MCU in a new parody explainer video preparing audiences for the upcoming movie.

Cocaine Bear is easy to understand from the title and trailers have already teased that the movie will deliver lots of violence, gore, and laughs. As a self-aware action-comedy/ thriller aimed at teens and adults, Cocaine Bear isn't dissimilar to the likes of Violent Night and M3gan. [Cocaine Bear](https://screenrant.com/tag/cocaine-bear/) actor Scott Seiss, who also happens to be a viral TikTok star, trolls the MCU in a new parody explainer video for the upcoming animal rampage movie.

Elizabeth Banks' “Cocaine Bear” could have been so much more, but we'll have to settle with what we got, which is a very dumb, Fargo-esque comedy.

The real-life female bear didn’t bother, let alone terrorize, anybody. But clearly, Banks has taken liberties with the actual events. Kudos to Allan Henry, a protégé of Andy Serkis, responsible for the bear’s amazing motion-capture performance. But I mean, really, if you buy a ticket for this movie it’s to watch a bear high on cocaine ripping a dozen or so people to death Instead, she directs it with the full knowledge and acknowledgment that what she’s creating here is absolutely ridiculous. That’s why the final stretch just doesn’t work at all.

With a title like Cocaine Bear, you'd be hard-pressed to think that the new movie by director Elizabeth Banks (Pitch Perfect 2) isn't worth the watch.

As critics underscore, the great thing about Cocaine Bear is that its title already provides a pretty clear picture of what you can expect from the adventure. Cocaine Bear tells the insane story of what happens after a massive shipment of the drug from the title falls from a plane mid-flight, in the middle of a forest. As the early reactions from the crazy story (based on real events) come in, we have confirmation of what we already suspected: the action-comedy is a wild trip that is as unhinged as you’d expect it to be and delivers exactly what it promises.

The cast for the movie includes Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Ray Liotta, Kristofer Hivju, and Sweet Tooth star, Christian Convery.

Let us know in the comments. You’ll see an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists, and teens converge in a Georgia forest where a bear has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow. The answer depends on where you live. Will Cocaine Bear be on Netflix Outside the United States? Quickly becoming one of the most anticipated new movie releases of 2023 is Cocaine Bear, directed by Elizabeth Banks. When will Cocaine Bear be on Netflix US?

Cocaine Bear has won a PETA award for making a cool bear movie without using any real bears.

This is a wild, inspired-by-a-true-story ride about a bear that eats a colossal amount of cocaine and then starts rampaging through the woods in George. That means the "bear" in Cocaine Bear has to do everything from leap toward a speeding ambulance to climb a tree and drag a screaming victim down. At first blush it might sound strange that a movie starring a bear, with the word "Bear" right there in the title, would refrain from using any actual bears to tell its story, but this isn't a film about the wonders of nature. “Cocaine Bear’s hyper-realistic star proves that the future of film lies in technology, not dragging abused animals onto movie sets,” PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange said in a statement. Critics have hailed it as [perhaps the best movie of the year so far](https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/cocaine-bear-movie-first-reactions-twitter), and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have already commended Cocaine Bear for...its lack of real bears. [Cocaine Bear](https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/topic/cocaine-bear) -- the much-anticipated new horror-comedy from director Elizabeth Banks -- hasn't yet hit theaters.

The new movie “Cocaine Bear” goes into wide release Friday. Playing off that renewed interest in animals gone wild, the Normal Theater is screening two of ...

[He wrote about “Cocaine Bear” and other nature-bites-back films on his Normal Theater blog](https://www.normaltheater.com/118/Film-CULTure#bites). They are 1981’s “Wild Beasts” (about a zoo where the water supply becomes contaminated with PCP) and 2020’s “Psycho Ape” (about a killer gorilla that escapes from a zoo and goes on a murdering spree). We love it whenever we can bring in talent associated with the film, to have a conversation about how it was made.” It seems to be wired into us as a species, no matter where we live or our cultural backgrounds. Saturday](https://normaltheater.com/). “It’s a lovely chance to peel back the curtain a little bit.

'Cocaine Bear' filmmaker Elizabeth Banks caught up with Deadline to discuss her pitch for the horror-comedy, her plans for the future and more.

Yell out.” It was just so fun that that was how I was able to get the performance, was just describing you being eaten alive. I like to go to the theater and be entertained. I want everybody to be excited about the movie that we’re about to make. I mean, the combination of Keri Russell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Margo Martindale, the three of them got on like a house on fire. I’m a husband grieving the loss of my wife and trying to connect with my son. I like to be on; I like to be up in everybody’s business on set. So when I say this movie was risky, when I say that I was scared of it…Look, I can bring great actors to set. BANKS: I’m proud to say that PETA did reach out to us at the very beginning to ask how it was going to work. The rampaging bear on cocaine was a great hook, but I knew that the opportunity here was to make something with these grounded characters that the audience would fall in love with. I was in love with them on the page, and then I got this incredible cast, and that’s what really kept me invested the whole time. I’m getting older, and I want to stay relevant and be in the conversation.” It’s definitely rare to read something that you think, “Oh, I can’t wait to commit two and a half years of my life to this.” [Laughs] You’ve got to really feel that there’s some passion behind it, and I just fell in love with the characters in this script.

Wondering how to watch Cocaine Bear? We have all of the details on the bonkers comedic action-thriller, from showtimes to streaming info.

[It Prequel Series Officially Ordered at HBO Max45m ago - Welcome to Derry will serve as a prequel to the movies.](/articles/hbo-maxs-it-prequel-series-is-officially-moving-forward-with-andy-muschietti-returning-to-direct) [Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – Bode Is the BioShock Infinite Elizabeth of Cal Kestis’s Story3h ago - Double the trouble for the Cal's enemies.](/articles/star-wars-jedi-survivor-get-a-little-help-from-your-ai-friends-ign-first) [ISSUE NO. Children of the Corn, written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, opens in theaters on March 3, 2023, and will be available on Demand and digital on March 21, 2023.](/videos/children-of-the-corn-2023-official-red-band-trailer) Ultimately, to save the world that he is in and return to the future that he knows, Barry’s only hope is to race for his life. Based on the short story by Stephen King, Children of the Corn is a chilling new re-telling for a whole new generation. The film runs for a total of 1 hour and 35 minutes including credits. The company looks to blow fresh air into theaters with Cocaine Bear, a bonkers comedy/action-thriller starring Keri Russell; the late, great Ray Liotta; and a coked-up, bloodthirsty black bear.

The early reviews for Cocaine Bear are unanimous with their love for the film about the drug-fueled animal.

As it sounds, the movie is about a bear high on cocaine who goes on a bloody rampage. M3GAN, another horror made with a modest budget, released to great success in January, scoring well with critics and raking in big profits at the box office. "It feels like we’ll have every animal in existence do cocaine until we come full circle and just make movies about humans doing it again. With a bizarre premise that's very unapologetic about going all-in with its violent mayhem, it may not seem on paper that a movie called Cocaine Bear would be landing so well with professional movie critics. Cocaine Bear is written by Jimmy Warden and directed by Elizabeth Banks. [Cocaine Bear](https://movieweb.com/movie/cocaine-bear).

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Keri Russell in a scene from “Cocaine Bear,” directed by Elizabeth Banks. Pat Redmond/Universal Pictures via ...

“For the scale of that movie, it’s a huge hit. The risk was: I was never going to have the lead character of the movie on the set of the movie,” Banks says. “Cocaine Bear” is here to party. Nothing, it turned out, could cut through all the noise like “Cocaine Bear.” “Cocaine Bear” is here to be bold. “We thought at some point, someone was going to say, ‘Well you can’t call it ‘Cocaine Bear.’ You have to call it ‘A Walk in the Woods.'” “That was the goal.” The movie, itself, is like a meme sprung to life — a kind of spiritual heir to “Snakes on a Plane” crossed with a Paddington Bear fever dream. It just means you have to swing the bat a little harder,” Lord says. “I’m the bear who ate cocaine,” reads one of the film’s official tweets. At a time when much in Hollywood can feel pre-packaged, the makers of “Cocaine Bear” think it can be an untamed exception. Yes, “Cocaine Bear” is a real movie.

Not since Snakes on a Plane has a title promised so much, but despite a great cast the plot is too tame.

There is also no bear behavioural expert, spurious or otherwise, to talk us through what happens to the ursine brain on cocaine, ideally with wall charts and diagrams. But is this film, like that Samuel L Jackson vehicle, also fated to be blown off-course by the hot air of its own hype? Once upon a time, deep in the woods by Georgia’s Chattahoochee River, a bear stumbled upon a cartel’s stash, ingested $2m worth of cocaine and …

Elizabeth Banks has promised her viewers no more than a bear on drugs, and a bear on drugs is what they get.

But the main event is the cocaine bear, and the meager humans only distract from her might. What that poor creature did before keeling over is a mystery, but Jimmy Warden’s script imagines a bacchanal of carnage around that event, retaining only the location (a national park in Georgia) and the name of the drug runner who caused the incident, Andrew C. The true story of the cocaine bear is relatively mundane—after drug smugglers dropped their latest shipment from Colombia in the woods, a dead black bear was found with some 75 pounds of cocaine in its system, and was eventually stuffed and mounted. If blockbuster-level gore is what you’re after, Cocaine Bear delivers—I was impressed with how gleefully gross Banks gets at times, dropping severed limbs from the sky and strewing plenty of intestines on the ground. This project does not skimp on its main attraction, but it does seem unsure of what to put around it, throwing a variety of hapless characters in the mix and arming them mostly with indifferent comedy in the face of some truly gnarly violence. I’m probably the fool for trying to summon some profundity from these bloodstained reels; Banks has promised her viewers no more than a cocaine bear, and a cocaine bear is what they get, all growly and crazed and rendered with very expensive-looking CGI.

The audience is cued to watch Elizabeth Banks' coked-up-bear-as-slasher comedy as a wilderness thriller crossed with "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

The sequence that follows is a true jaw-dropper, though it almost feels like it could have come out of a new version of “Smokey and the Bandit.” “Cocaine Bear” does whatever it takes to get a rise out of you. But have no fear, we’re always in on the joke of it all, which is that none of it matters. “Cocaine Bear” was never crowdsourced, but one of its selling points is that the film’s audience has been primed to think of the movie as theirs. And the elaborate chintziness of the characters is all part of the design. It starts out in the Ranger’s cabin, which the bear has ambushed, and carries on in the van that several characters jump into — we think, once they start driving, that they’ve escaped, but we would be wrong. The line on “Cocaine Bear” is that it’s so nutty, so luridly preposterous, so WTF-are-we-watching? But the other half of the joke is that “Cocaine Bear,” unlike “Snakes on a Plane,” takes off from a concept that you can take to the bank: In 1985, a black bear, in the Chattahoochee mountains of Tennessee, has consumed several kilos of cocaine (they were left scattered from a plane by a flaked-out drug dealer), which transforms the normally peaceful animal into a gnashing, raging, bloody-jawed human-eating beast. [Keri Russell](https://variety.com/t/keri-russell/) grounds the movie as the distraught mom, and the great Margo Martindale does what she can with the broadly written role of the Park Ranger, who is myopically romantically inclined. Movies have been mixing carnage and giggles since at least the carnival horror of the “Evil Dead” films. (at the screening I attended, someone literally yelled out, “What the fuck is this movie?”) that it’s all but irresistible. Jackson line, “I have had it with these mothefuckin’ snakes on this motherfuckin‘ plane!” The result was that “Snakes on a Plane” felt like the first piece of brazen Hollywood schlock that was crowdsourced. “Snakes on a Plane,” which sounded like a title that Don Simpson scrawled in white powder on a table at 4:00 a.m., was a movie that wore its brain-deadness on both lapels.

Starring Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, Margot Martindale, and of course, a cocaine bear, 'Cocaine Bear' is exactly what it sounds like.

But it is also a reminder of how rare it is that we see films like this, studio comedies that take big swings and attempt to do something wild that might not do crazy amounts of money, but will find its intended audience—people who will actively go see a movie entitled Cocaine Bear. It's a film that knows that it's ludicrous and relishes in the wildness of watching a cocaine-fueled bear go nuts on Blood Mountain. Banks is no stranger to weird, over-the-top humor, and she proves that she can be just as over-the-top as the best of them here. And while at its base, Cocaine Bear is just a ridiculous idea that hits all the checkboxes you’d want a film called Cocaine Bear to mark off, it’s also a reminder of wonderful days of mid-budget comedies, where studios would take a wild chance on something absolutely unhinged just to see if it might take off with audiences. No matter your thoughts on Cocaine Bear, it’s worth it just to see the equally horrific and hilarious scene where the coked-out black bear chases after an ambulance with disgusting and unbelievable results. Syd Dentwood (Ray Liotta) is the drug dealer behind the failed drop, who sends his associate Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Syd’s own son Eddie ( [Alden Ehrenreich](https://collider.com/tag/alden-ehrenreich/)) to recover the missing cocaine.

The title says it all. Just like Snakes on a Plane was about just that, the new horror comedy Cocaine Bear is about a 500-pound bear on a jihad after coming ...

Banks is a savvy director, never letting the intended humor camp things up too much but also well aware that this is a horror film with a flesh-chomping bear at its center and all the body parts that entails — and audiences have to buy all that or the soufflé falls. There isn’t a whole lot of dimension to any of the human characters, most are played very broadly (but it is always nice to see Martindale swing for the fences, as it is Liotta in this one of his final roles hamming up as the main human villain). Then there is Ranger Liz (a scene-stealing Margo Martindale), who must deal with the increasingly perilous situation in her forest while at the same time looking for love with a clueless PETA-type animal activist (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) who looks at all animals, on drug trips or not, as his friends and is blind to Ranger Liz’s affections. [Keri Russell](https://deadline.com/tag/keri-russell/) plays Sari, a good nurse and mother whose 12-year-old daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and her smitten friend Henry (Christian Convery) had gone on an outing to a waterfall and haven’t returned — especially worrysome as word of a bear on the loose gets around. Screenwriter Jimmy Warden was less interested in Thornton’s story, which is pretty fantastic stuff, than he was in the bear’s, who happened on to this stash and entered into a bloody, drug-fueled tour of terror. It is all not to be taken seriously, but fortunately director [Elizabeth Banks](https://deadline.com/tag/elizabeth-banks/) (Charlie’s Angels, Pitch Perfect 2) is smart enough to give audiences hungry for a Jaws in the wilderness some nice scares mixed in with the laughs plus a bit more bang for their buck than just a marketable title.

Truth-based tale of an animal on a drug-fuelled rampage is gonzo-horror fun until the buzz wears off.

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. Compare Standard and Premium Digital For a full comparison of Standard and Premium Digital,

If only this Pablo Escobear of a movie had snorted enough to stay up later and write a better plot.

Set during the Reagan-era “Just Say No” period, “Cocaine Bear” hopes to remark on the demonization of drugs and it also seems to have something to say about how humans misunderstand the balance of nature. “Cocaine Bear” is like a dull butter knife against those two. “Jane,” the opening song, is an homage to ”Wet Hot American Summer,” which Banks co-starred in and had the same Jefferson Starship opening tune. There’s a reference to Pines Mall, which is a little nod to “Back to the Future,” but who really cares? Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden have created a mashup of Quentin Tarantino bloodfests, Sam Raimi’s scare tactics and the Coen brothers’ absurdity. If you think it’s hysterical to see a bear do a bump off a severed leg stump, by all means, the movie theater is this way.

A Cocaine Bear review wouldn't really do the movie justice, so here's a rundown of the best moments and how they play into the coke-addled mania, ...

The scene where the bear does a flying leap into the back of an open ambulance. The film also ends with a baby bear sniffing and wiping its snout, an image that just wouldn’t be possible if this “true story” stuck to the truth. (We know she’s a she because Cocaine Bear collapses on top of Ehrenreich at one point, and to quote the film, “Her vagina is on my ear!”) First, the bear is obviously a CGI creation, which is actually for the best in terms of both animal and actor safety. And the manic energy and frenzied decision-making associated with the drug is woven into the fabric of the movie itself. “ [On the Wings of Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFhR2FHKmss)” makes more sense in context, while Grandmaster Melle Mel’s “ [White Lines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwRXI-y6M9o)” speaks for itself. As for the leg, this is neither the first nor the last severed-limb joke in Cocaine Bear. The scene where Margo Martindale accidentally blows a random kid’s brains out while trying to shoot the bear. It’s a creature feature where the monster is a bear that’s high on cocaine. (Daveed makes him come along anyway.) Then we meet Sari (Keri Russell), a single mom whose daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) takes advantage of the fact that Sari works nights in order to ditch school with her friend Henry (Christian Convery). The word “cocaine” is uttered dozens of times, if not hundreds, in this film. It’s a nostalgic trip back to the ’80s — the era of tight perms, Members Only jackets, and synthesizers.

The action comedy, directed by Elizabeth Banks and featuring Ray Liotta in his final role, has "gonzo potential" but "loses momentum" and is "strangely ...

In the cinema, most viewers will wish that it was wittier, faster, and more willing to fulfil the gonzo potential of its in-your-face title. In short, the bits with a bear in them are a lot better than the bits that don't have a bear in them. Rather than focusing on being outrageous and entertaining, Banks and Warden focus on sappy musings about the importance of being a caring parent and a loyal friend. And there are a lot more of the latter than the former. But she and her fiancé soon notice that the bear is "demented", and they try desperately to make sense of the ursine code of conduct: "If it's black, fight back. Once Banks has demonstrated that she is not afraid to kill off endearing characters in the most gleefully gory way, she moves on to a montage of 1980s anti-drugs adverts, which establishes the period setting, and suggests that she has some political satire in mind.

Cocaine Bear is a gory, hilarious, and totally fun as hell horror comedy that maximizes its inherently absurd premise while rarely overdosing on the joke.

Ultimately, to save the world that he is in and return to the future that he knows, Barry’s only hope is to race for his life. There’s not really a message here because Cocaine Bear doesn’t overly romanticize cocaine or sternly denounce it beyond the fact that in this movie, doing a line (or eating a kilo) is the equivalent of teens having sex in a slasher movie. You’re also not quite rooting for the bear because it’s a violent animal who finds cocaine, finds out it loves cocaine, and goes on a warpath to find more cocaine. Along the same lines, any of us might encounter a large bear on a camping trip or hike in real life, but none of us will ever encounter one on tons of cocaine. So a Cocaine Bear scenario will not happen to you or your family, and that makes it immensely fun watching it happen to other people, especially when several of those people don’t really have the best motives in mind. It’s huge, fast, and able to climb trees, knock down doors, or leap dozens of feet into the air to get what it wants. So it played on the fear that you could become shark food the next time you spend the day at the beach, and it amped that fear up to 11 by making a shark that’s enormous and intentionally hunting people, which doesn’t really happen. It’s both very funny and very violent, providing us with a comically blood-soaked day in the park with a murderous bear on cocaine. That’s not just because the entire concept is absurd but also because every single person (and animal) on screen is fully, completely committed to the bit, and there’s an infectious sense that they were very clearly having an absolute blast making it. The movie Cocaine Bear, on the other hand (or paw, I guess) proposes, “What if that bear had instead lived, and gone on a rampage through a dense forest, killing nearly everyone in its path while hunting down even more cocaine, a substance it has become quite fond of.” But unlike things like Snakes on a Plane – a movie that asks, “What if there were snakes on a plane?” – or Sharknado – a movie that asks “What if there were sharks in a tornado?” – Cocaine Bear is actually surprisingly well made. You probably guessed that from the pitch: a bear finds cocaine in the woods, eats it, and then very bad things happen. The real-life story of an American black bear who ingested 75 pounds of cocaine in 1985 after a drug drop gone wrong ended in the bear’s instant death, obviously.

LOS ANGELES, Feb 24 — If you go down to the movie theatre Friday, you're sure of a big, angry, drug-fuellled surprise. Cocaine Bear, the new comedy-horror ...

“Just on the face of it, when you look at the name of the movie... She told AFP she had been inspired to make the film after reading the script at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, a time she described as “the most chaotic human history moment in hundreds of years.” the tagline ‘Get In Line’... Marty Makary, a prominent US public health expert and author, said he was “disappointed” to see Hollywood “once again sensationalise cocaine” by “portraying cocaine use as fun and funny.” “They’re not going for the mainstream audiences — they are going for people who like edgy, out-there movies, who want to have some fun at the movie theatre,” said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. The real bear, quickly dubbed “Pablo Escobear” by the press, sadly died from an overdose — but the movie imagines what might have happened if it had instead developed a taste for cocaine and gone on a wild killing spree to procure more.

Stache (Aaron Holliday) and Daveed (O'Shea Jackson, Jr.) Image via Universal. Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Cocaine BearThere ...

The fate of the bear and the lost cocaine is left ambiguous. Another post-credit moment reveals that upon his escape, Stache discovers a duffel bag of cocaine and decides to take it for himself. He accepts that Daveed is his best friend; the pair agrees to take care of Bob’s dog after Reba gives her to them. Bob gets in a standoff with Eddie, Daveed, and Stache, but Syd arrives and kills the older cop, allowing Stache to flee the scene. Peter is brutally dismembered by the bear, and Sari decides to protect Henry while an injured Liz flees to get help. While Daveed is nearly killed, Eddie rescues him in the water, and Sari is able to save his life. After Dee Dee is kidnapped by the bear and taken to its cubs, Henry is discovered by Sari, Liz, and Peter. It’s a film that’s about as straightforward as its title would suggest, as it is in fact about a wild black bear in the 1980s that manages to ingest cocaine and develop a serious addiction. In the film, cocaine is dumped in the mountain to be picked up by Escobar’s crew by an energetic smuggler (Matthew Rhys) who flies over Georgia. Sari goes looking for her daughter Dee Dee, who has skipped school with Henry to go paint a nearby waterfall, and Sari decides to join a scouting mission with Liz and Peter. Unfortunately, the nurse Sari ( [Keri Russell](https://collider.com/tag/keri-russell/)) loses her daughter Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince) in the woods when she and her friend Henry (Christian Convery) go exploring. Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of Cocaine Bear.

Cocaine Bear takes its basic premise from a true story but extends it to exhilarating highs. Read our review of the viral sensation.

Banks and Warden are clearly in on all the jokes of Cocaine Bear; the film begins with a Wikipedia quote after all. Above all, Cocaine Bear is hilarious. A drug smuggler tosses bags of cocaine out of a plane before meeting his maker and the poor bear just happened to come across the coke, eagerly eating some. Let’s be honest; no one buys a ticket to Cocaine Bear expecting a character-driven drama. While the real bear died, Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden were clearly inspired by the incident and created an elaborate set of characters around a bear high on cocaine. Elizabeth Banks’ third film as a director is loosely based on the true story of an American black bear ingesting over 30 kilograms of cocaine, which was dropped off a plane.

A bear finds cocaine in the woods, gobbles it up and goes on a deadly rampage in this inert horror-comedy directed by the actress.

[Wayfair coupon $20 off](https://www.wsj.com/coupons/wayfair) [TurboTax service code 2023 - $20 off](https://www.wsj.com/coupons/turbotax) One of those “inspired by true events”—i.e., almost wholly fictitious—stories, “Cocaine Bear” takes place in 1985, when (as a news clip of that era featuring Tom Brokaw tells us) a cocaine trafficker fell to his death from a plane in Tennessee while ditching duffel bags full of the stuff.

It gives me no pleasure to hate on Cocaine Bear. The director Elizabeth Banks (Pitch Perfect 2, the Charlie's Angels reboot) isn't the chief problem, ...

File this one in the “well, the title was catchy” folder with Snakes On A Plane and last year’s Violent Night. The movie expands the scope and body count a tad. This is capped by an end credits dedication to the late Liotta, who deserved a better finale. A half-hour into Cocaine Bear, everyone, person and bear alike, has become a drag. Cocaine Bear is a title, certainly, and Universal put together a promisingly berserk trailer. The smuggler died after his parachute malfunctioned and he landed in someone’s driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee.