Kinda mild, it's not what you want from a movie with this premise and rating. The aim is clearly to have some trashy, B-movie fun, but it doesn't succeed. Don't get me wrong: it has a couple of entertaining moments, but this is such a meandering slog when the bear isn't on screen. All of the characters suck, and once again we have a comedy on our hands where most of the intended jokes are either annoying or unfunny. To me it feels like this is specifically aimed at people who have one of those 'lol so random xD' type of personalities, which is not my vibe. Nor do I feel like it's the audience this material would naturally appeal to, so I don't understand this approach. Wouldn't you want this to have more edge and dark comedy? Your primary audience is likely to consist of people who spend time on the edgier sides of the internet, not Grace Randolph. I even feel like the marketing is a little disingenuous in that regard, which makes it seem like this movie goes way harder than it actually does.

The performances are fine given the awful material that the actors are handed, and the music's actually pretty decent. 80s synths are heavily overused in popular entertainment at the moment, but if you're going to use them, you might as well get Mark Mothersbaugh to do the soundtrack. However, the visuals of this movie are generally bland and uninspired, Banks still has a long way to go in that regard. Overall, this is pretty forgettable, I'd wait for it on streaming if you're interested.

4/10

After the initial hit of Cocaine Bear, the film left me scratching for something a little stronger.

I think the main drawback of this film is that it is trying to do too much. There are seven to eight characters introduced throughout the course of the film, with each given significant time to develop their story and motivations. This takes a lot of time away from the main attraction, the cocaine bear. There is a period of almost 45 minutes where we are focused on these "secondary" characters, without any action or appearance of the cocaine bear. This section was pretty slow paced and started to lose me, but once the bear is re-introduced, the film gets significantly better. The paramedic scene was superb.

The comedy was pretty lackluster as well. The entire theater was laughing aloud, but I found myself only chuckling at a few jokes. This left the script feeling somewhat bland. But the lack of humor is made up for by the absolute brutality on display. There are some really messed up kills that do not shy away from the blood and gore. Some of the effects looked to be prosthetics as well, which always have an especially disgusting appearance to them.

The story overall was pretty decent, but the ending was atrocious and incredibly predictable. I found that it was really over the top and cheesy, but not in a good way.

The visual appearance of the bear was pretty solid. The CGI was done well but is spotty in a couple of scenes. Overall, I was slightly entertained by this film, but I can't help but feel it did not live up to its full potential.

Score: 55% |
Verdict: Average

There’s a bear high on mass quantities of illegal drugs that is going on a murderous rampage in a Tennessee state park in “Cocaine Bear,” an absolutely awful action / horror movie from director Elizabeth Banks. I understand with a premise like that, it’s supposed to be stupid. The problem is that the movie isn’t just dumb, it’s actually bad, with poor direction, acting, CGI, writing, and storytelling.

Loosely based on true events (yes, really), the film is inspired by the 1985 story of a drug runner’s plane crash. In order to save a large quantity of cocaine, the man threw out several duffel bags full of the stuff over Tennessee and then jumped to his death when his parachute didn’t open. A black bear got into the drugs, consumed most of it and, according to experts, immediately died. This movie imagines what could have happened if the bear didn’t die from ingesting all that booger sugar. In this bloody and gory version, the 500 pound apex predator goes bananas and kills everyone in sight.

It’s a fictional story that is stretched too thin, especially with the meager subplots about a single mom (Keri Russell), her missing daughter (Brooklynn Prince) and friend (Christian Convery), a group of criminals (Ray Liotta, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich), two park rangers (Margo Martindale, Jesse Tyler Ferguson), a police detective (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), and random tourists and teenagers that must think on their toes in order to avoid being the bear’s next victim. Jimmy Warden‘s script is atrocious because he’s trying to force a story that’s not at all compelling nor complex. The actors give clunky performances and character-wise, there just isn’t a whole lot to root for.

Banks isn’t the most skilled director, and a film like this certainly doesn’t demand a whole lot of talent behind the camera. But there’s something that consistently feels “off” with her style and tone, especially in the random, mostly unsuccessful jokes. The humor didn’t work for me at all, and when I did muster a laugh, I wasn’t doing so because the movie was good — I was laughing because the movie was so dumb. I understand that a movie about a huge bear ingesting a bounty of blow is supposed to be dumb, but it also has to be good in order to work, and this movie is not.

To become a cult classic, a movie must be one that you’d want to watch on repeat. “Cocaine Bear” is simply not funny enough, not campy enough, and not kooky enough to succeed. It’s nothing but a one-joke trainwreck.

**By: Louisa Moore / www.ScreenZealots.com**

**_Not funny enough as a comedy and too silly to take serious_**

In 1985, several bags of cocaine fall from a drug smuggling plane in the mountainous area of northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee. Near Blood Mountain, a mother black bear eats a lot of the cocaine and goes on a bloody spree as it menaces hikers, rangers, thugs, EMTs and cops.

“Cocaine Bear” (2023) is a campy creature feature inspired by the true story directed by, of all people, Elizabeth Banks. It was Ray Liotta’s second to last movie before his death on May 26, 2022. Keri Russell is on hand as the concerned mother of a tween hiker. In real-life the black bear weighed 175 lbs, but this was changed to almost 400 lbs for the movie.

The production unbelievably cost $35 million. I say “unbelievably” because this is a decidedly throwaway creature feature of the semi-goofy SyFy variety. The CGI is a little superior, but not enough to make any appreciable difference. I’m speaking as someone who enjoys some of the better SyFy flicks on occasion. A good example is “Sasquatch Mountain” (2006), aka “Devil on the Mountain,” which only cost $800,000.

Except for the lush scenery (shot in Ireland, locations listed below), this is decent but generally meh. It’s not humorous enough as a comedy, but you can’t take it serious either because it’s too goofy. It doesn’t help that Keri is the only female worth mentioning (as a footnote at that).

How this garnered as much attention as it did is a great mystery. “Grizzly Park” (2008) treaded similar terrain and, while far from a great movie, is more entertaining than this (at a fraction of the budget).

The film runs 1 hour, 35 minutes, and was shot south of Dublin, Ireland, in Barnaslingan, Powerscourt and, further south, Avoca.

GRADE: C-

I got excited for this one, I mean it's 2023 and Cocaine Bear had the promise of NOT being political. It had the promise of NOT having meh message. It had the promise of NOT being serious.

I mean, the bear was obviously the star. People were going to see it because they wanted to see a giant bear high on coke killing people in a mindless and humorous way...

... but.... something happened with the direction. The humor was clearly there on paper. That was evident enough, but the delivery was... meh. The jokes didn't land because they ran too long, the timing was off, everything was there for it to be funny and fun... it just feels like it was made by a director that can't tell a joke.

And it falls on the director, because the writer clearly can. Everything is there to make it work. But all the action is predictable and all the jokes are butchered.

In the hands of anyone else, this would have been hysterical fun.