Not since Snakes on a Plane, has a movie completely nailed on the premise of its title.

There’s a bear, and it gets high on cocaine. That’s it… and much like the titular character’s addiction, I wanted more!

Why bother with silly human characters and their silly human needs? Give more bear on cocaine! Give me the scene where the bear’s spouse leaves them due to its addiction. Give me the paranoid scene of a bear thinking it’s being followed by the park rangers. Give me the scene of the bear selling it’s family heirloom for some of that Florida Snow. 

Director Elizabeth Banks does an entertaining enough job at filling the runtime with a plot. But that’s just baking soda cutting into the good stuff. I wanted more of that sweet, sweet rush of pure cocaine…bear.

Keri Russell is in it and so is Ray Liotta (RIP). They act as the distracting humans. Robbing us of valuable bear time. 

Maybe we could have scene were bear child services takes away the cubs after it’s found out they have gotten into their mothers stash. I don’t know.

What I do know is that every time I saw the cocaine bear, I saw Americans. I saw that like the bear, we too are having to deal with the upper class spreading their agenda on us from up above. Then we unknowingly ingest it, and have to deal with the consequences. Yes, Cocaine Bear is a communist manifesto. Yes, Cocaine Bear is a response to corporate greed. Yes, Cocaine Bear is awesome.

Dear reader, if you made it this far I commend you. And if you thought this review was serious, I envy your naivety.

Sometimes a movie comes out with just a premise, and sometimes it works. Most of the time it doesn’t. Cocaine Bear falls into the former. Plus at 95 minutes, it’s the perfect length. Are “Gore Comedy” or “Slasher Laughter” a genre? If not, I’m going to trademark them. Because they would describe this movie perfectly. It’s a Jaws for a cynical time.

For those of you who need to actually know the plot, a drug smuggler’s plane is going down over the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. He dumps the cocaine and tries to parachute out but knocks himself unconscious. He falls to his death, leaving the multiple duffel bags, full of cocaine, unclaimed. The B,C,D, and I guess the E, plot all involve people going to the forest for different reasons, like ditching school, or drug dealers looking for their lost cocaine. Chaos ensues, bear does cocaine, and boom…we’re off to the races. 

Also, a brief moment to talk about Bank’s directing here:

The fun of this movie is seeing in what ridiculous way is the Bear going to kill someone, much like a horror movie. However, these are usually played for laughs. No scene embodies that quite as well as the scene involving the bear and an ambulance. The momentum that scene has no right to be as good as it is, but it works and is really fun. Which is all that I am asking for in a movie called Cocaine Bear. 

Cocaine Bear is now playing in theaters.

For our bear speakers, please view this link for a reading of this review in your native language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtF1GnObpPo