It is 1985, and high above the Chattahoochee National Forest, Andrew Thorton (Matthew Rhys) is frantically offloading duffel bags full of cocaine to avoid a crash landing. Sent to recover the bags, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) make their way through the forest, but Officer Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), who has been following this case for some time, is hot on their tails. The law, however, is not the biggest threat to the smugglers, cops, and tourists in the forest as a 500-pound black bear has found the cocaine and is tearing through the park on a bloody rampage in search of her next hit. 

From Universal Pictures comes Cocaine Bear, a hard-R dark comedy which is based on a nugget of truth, directed by Elizabeth Banks and written by Jimmy Warden. At 95 minutes, it is a little long in the tooth given the entire premise is delivered in the title. On one hand, that is fine as it is a movie about a bear on cocaine – it does not want to make any kind of profound statement about drug use or humanity’s impact on nature – but on the other hand, it is hard to stretch a neat factoid that would work more as a subplot to a larger idea into an entire feature-length endeavor.  

The ensemble piece has a wide range of tones to balance across its runtime. As for the plot of the film, it is largely carried by Sari (Keri Russell) who is looking for her daughter, Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and her friend, Henry (Christian Convery), who skipped school to go hiking to the waterfall, a search which runs in tandem with the drug recovery mission. Sari, afraid of Dee Dee’s fate, is relitigating her actions as a mother to Henry, while elsewhere in the woods, Eddie is nursing heartache over the loss of his wife to an only-somewhat sympathetic Daveed. For the laughs, Bob fills the role of bumbling street cop to good enough effect, but the real charm comes from Park Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) and naturalist Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) who she is trying to court. The three really seem to be able to tap into the campy elements of the script and measure their performances accordingly. That is not to say that the cast saddled with the more emotional storylines are not successful, but the script challenges them with unclear roles and motivations in the overall arc, and given that Cocaine Bear follows the slasher template, when the more comedic characters are all dispatched with, it causes the latter half of the film to be bogged down by the least interesting written roles. 

When it comes to the overall flow of the film, Warden’s script does well at oscillating between the groups of people traipsing through the forest but leaves a lot to be desired in so far as capitalizing on the farcical elements. There is very little connective tissue between the groups other than that they are being pursued by the bear. Once the initial insanity of a coked out bear wears off on audiences – and it does wear off, quite quickly – there is little excitement left in the film. Having better opportunities for interaction between the groups such as traps for the bear, clues about what is going on, or discarded items leading to jumped-to conclusions would open the film up to a greater variety of comedy than just a bear running around in a drugged rampage. Instead, Warden opts for humor that is a little more blunt and absurd in nature as most of the attempted laughs come at the gruesome dismembering of the characters. There is certainly a place for that brand of comedy in this film, but when it is the punchline for the lion’s share – or, rather, bear’s share – of the jokes, the need for variety becomes quickly apparent. 

Cocaine Bear is not an all together bad film, it just does not rise to the occasion to be the best it could have been, and it is incredibly disappointing in that respect. Not quite miss-cast, the film underutilizes its best stars – as mentioned, Martindale and Ferguson, but also Aaron Holliday in a supporting role and a brief appearance by Scott Seiss – and has a truly confounding turn by Ray Liotta in his final role leading to an expected, but unfortunately tasteless given the subject matter, in memoriam card at the close of the film. It is an interesting concept taken horribly beyond the margins of absurdity – the real bear the film is based on is not credited with killing anyone – and there just is not enough to support the run time. The strings are apparent throughout, not uniquely citing the look of the CGI Bear which feels a little off but fits in well with the overall tone of the film, the criticism is more levied at the setups for the jokes and the cloying attempt at visual period humor which really takes the air out of the film and makes for a far more sluggish watch than the title implies.