Earlier today, I watched the new Elizabeth Banks-directed dark comedy Cocaine Bear at AMC theaters.
This was actually my second time viewing this film...as I was lucky enough to attend a private test screening of Cocaine Bear back in November of last year.
So now that the comedy which is loosely based on the true story of an actual black bear that overdosed on a duffel bag full of cocaine in 1985 is finally out in theaters, all I can say is, Cocaine Bear was a hoot!
Unsurprisingly, there were no changes made to the movie since that test screening (apart from the final music score and the addition of end credits), and that's because Cocaine Bear was perfect the way it was. Who cares about the current 71% score on Rotten Tomatoes? I don't.
The cast was astounding—from the late Ray Liotta playing a drug kingpin named Sydney White to Keri Russell portraying Sari, a single mom in Georgia who's determined to find her daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) after she played hooky from school to paint waterfalls in the forest.
Alden Ehrenreich went from being Han Solo (in Solo: A Star Wars Story five years ago) to playing Eddie...the level-headed son of Sydney White, while O'Shea Jackson Jr. portrayed Daveed—Eddie's unofficial best friend who's bent on finding the bags of cocaine in the forest while not messing up his spiffy new shoes and sports jersey as he did so.
Margo Martindale was great as Liz, a Georgia park ranger who had the hots for Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), a wildlife expert who—as the movie's trailer showed—died a very horrific death at the paws of the coked-up bear.
Isiah Whitlock Jr. played Bob, a no-nonsense Tennessee detective whose two goals in life were to locate the cocaine while looking for the perfect dog to adopt and play with at the same time. Ayoola Smart, who somewhat resembled Jennifer Lawrence in this movie, portrayed Officer Reba...Bob's subordinate who was both loyal (by looking over Bob's adorable canine Rosette while he was gone searching for the coke) and not-so-loyal (I won't spoil that plot twist for ya) to the detective simultaneously.
Christian Convery played Henry, Dee Dee's best friend from grade school who would do anything to impress Sari's daughter...even taking a spoonful of cocaine to do so (of course he spat it out).
Scott Seiss—who did a great job promoting Cocaine Bear on his Twitter account up till the film's theatrical release yesterday—portrayed Tom, a paramedic who, along with his coworker Beth (Kahyun Kim), also had pretty gruesome fates after they came across the bear.
Aaron Holliday, J.B. Moore and Leo Hanna were hilarious as Kid, Vest and Ponytail...a trio of bandits who were a pain in the arse to Ranger Liz even after they got their butts kicked by Daveed inside a public restroom.
Kristofer Hivju and Hannah Hoekstra genially set the tone of the film as Olaf and Elsa, two tourists who were both lucky enough to see a black bear in person for the first time, and also unlucky enough to experience the fury of a black bear that was high on coke.
And not to be forgotten was Matthew Rhys as Andrew Thornton—the real-life drug smuggler in the 1985 incident who set things in motion by dumping all those bags of cocaine out of an airplane onto Georgia's Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest below.
If you've read my previous movie reviews, you'll notice that I didn't really go into detail about all of the characters for those films like I did with the folks in Cocaine Bear...and that's because I waited three months after seeing this flick to express my pleasure in watching this extremely gory but very funny thriller!
From 2015's Pitch Perfect 2 to Cocaine Bear, Elizabeth Banks showed that she is adept at creating satisfying cinematic comedies. (She directed the 2019 action comedy Charlie's Angels as well.) With Cocaine Bear, Banks has demonstrated that she can make a movie that's almost as bloody as what you would see in a film by Quentin Tarantino or Eli Roth...and that's saying a lot!
So two enthusiastic thumbs up for Cocaine Bear! It may be a B-movie, but it provided grade-A entertainment for me at the multiplex.
And not to spoil the ending, but Cocaine Bear lent itself to a sequel. Happy Saturday!
