Director: Elizabeth Banks
Screenplay: Jimmy Warden
Starring: Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Margo Martindale and Ray Liotta
Country: USA
Running Time: 95 min
Year: 2023
BBFC Certificate: 15
Cocaine Bear. What a title. From its initial announcement, Cocaine Bear absolutely fascinated me. Seeing one of the big studios like Universal not only greenlight but also finance something as silly in concept, even if it is based on a true story, was a sight to behold. Although, saying that this is based on a true story is a little bit of a stretch. Cocaine Bear contains an excess of drugs, violence, swearing, gore and a bear murdering people, yes, but in actuality, the titular bear didn’t murder anybody in real life. In fact, the real life story has a far sadder outcome than the film, with the bear overdosing on cocaine and dying, which wouldn’t have been the fun, exciting thrill-ride that the marketing makes this film out to be.
Director Elizabeth Banks has starred in her fair share of both comedies (Wet Hot American Summer, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Role Models) as well as horror films (Slither, Brightburn, The Uninvited), so on paper, she had the perfect résumé to tackle a story like this. While Cocaine Bear doesn’t reinvent the wheel, I was surprised by how much it leaned into the schlocky nature of the premise. A bear consumes a bag of cocaine and goes on an absolute rampage. It’s the perfect premise for a film, to certain individuals at least. And thankfully, I’m a huge fan of outrageous films with a silly hook.
The film opens with a drug smuggler ready to drop a boatload of cocaine out of a moving plane, before accidentally knocking himself out and falling out of the plane to his death. It sets up the tone of the film, before transitioning into facts about black bears, with the source given being Wikipedia. If you’re a fan of the almost meta-humour that executive producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller blew up from with The LEGO Movie and the Jump Street films, you’ll more than likely love the humour in store for you here. After the cocaine falls into a forest in the middle of Georgia, a black bear consumes all of the fallen cocaine and attacks some hikers.
As the film goes on, we’re introduced to more characters, such as Keri Russell’s Sari, a mother who finds out that her daughter Dee Dee went to the forest with her friend, skipping school. There’s O’Shea Jackson Jr,’s Daveed, who along with Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) is tasked with retrieving the cocaine by drug overlord Syd, played by the late Ray Liotta in one of his final roles. And then you have the park ranger Liz, played by the marvelous Margo Martindale who gets trapped dead centre in the middle of the events playing out in the forest, as a coked up bear roams loose. It’s a really fun cast of characters, and although none of them are particularly fleshed-out, well-written individuals, they service the story at hand and keep things feeling fresh. There’s moments of horror, there’s a bit of action and tons of humour splashed in. While I was never particularly scared by the events on screen, the humour mostly landed for me and kept me engaged.
The bear itself, referred to by crew in the bonus features as ‘Cokey’ is CGI, is brought to life by the fantastic team at WETA FX. I was pretty surprised by the practical nature of a lot of the gore in the film. Yes, there are deaths and some of them are pretty gruesome, which was a pleasure to see in a film that garnered a 15 age rating by the BBFC. There’s a nice little featurette included on the Blu-ray and UHD release detailing how they brought those sequences to life that I’d highly recommend if you’re interested. The CGI on Cokey is good, for the most part. There’s moments where you can tell it’s not a real bear, but it never took me out of the film completely in the way that some poor visual effects can do to a film that isn’t holding its own. The film is shot decently too, with nothing exceptionally standout about Banks’ direction but again, she leans into the schlocky nature well-enough that she’s able to balance the fluctuating genres well.
While Cocaine Bear isn’t amazing, it’s perfect Sunday afternoon entertainment for people wanting a fun, 90-minute adventure with a silly premise, fun set-pieces and jokes along the way. Don’t expect a masterpiece, because Apocalypse Now this is not. It’s exactly what it says on the tin, and for some, that’s going to be good enough.
Film: 
Cocaine Bear hits shelves May 29th 2023 on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD from Mediumrare Entertaiment. I viewed the UHD disc. This is Mediumrare’s first foray into 4K, to my knowledge, and they did a commendable job here. The transfer is solid, the image is sharp, full of detail and the HDR implementation breathes extra life into the film. I first saw this at the cinema when it came out, and the film never wow’d me visually, but at home, the colours really pop with high dynamic range. It’s not going to make anybody’s top 10 of the year lists, but for a modern film, it easily trumps a lot of the competition on a transfer level. Bitrates were high, hovering between 50-70Mbps. On the audio front, we have a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track, a 2.0 PCM mix as well as English hard-of-hearing subtitles. I listened to the 5.1 track and it sounded great, no complaints there. Overall, on an A/V level, Cocaine Bear is a solid first entry into the world of 4K for Mediumrare, and I do hope we get more from them in the future.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Alternate Ending
- Deleted & Extended Scenes
- Gag Reel
- All Roads Lead to Cokey: The Making of COCAINE BEAR – Meet the hilarious ensemble brought together to bring the movie of what is soon to be the world’s most famous bear to life.
- UnBEARable Bloodbath: Dissecting the Kills – From rigging to special effects makeup, to some of the actors doing their own stunts, we’ll get a bears-eye view into some of COCAINE BEAR‘s hilarious and gory kill scenes.
- Doing Lines – Cast and filmmakers read lines from the script to COCAINE BEAR, which was a work of art unto itself.
- Feature Commentary with Director/Producer Elizabeth Banks and Producer Max Handelman
There’s a handful of extras included too, which are more of a mixed bag unfortunately. Firstly, there’s the audio commentary with director Elizabeth Banks and producer Max Handelman which is an alright listen. There are anecdotes about some of the music choices used, and you can hear the pair having a fun time watching along with the audience, but it didn’t stand out in the way I was hoping. It’s a very by-the-numbers audio commentary, not awful by any means but not particularly engaging.
There’s a gag reel included that runs for around 2 minutes and contains some goofs from the film shoot. Also included is an alternate ending, which I found pretty humorous. It would have been a dark place for the film to end on, so I can understand why they didn’t go this route but I did enjoy its inclusion here. Next up are four and a half minutes of deleted and extended scenes which all feel inessential and I completely get why they were cut. For fans of the film, they might be an entertaining inclusion.
All Roads Lead to Cokey: The Making of Cocaine Bear is a fairly standard 9 minute EPK with the cast and crew discussing why they took on the project, what lead them to star in a film with a name as outrageous as Cocaine Bear. It’s a fun watch, but I would have loved to see something a little more in-depth included, because it feels more like a highlight reel than an actual making-of documentary.
Unbearable Bloodbath: Dissecting the Kills is probably my favourite inclusion here. As mentioned earlier, it’s an in-depth look at how they created some of the effects for the big kills in the film. I’m a sucker for modern movies utilizing practical effects when possible and it’s obvious that Elizabeth Banks and the rest of the crew really wanted to sell the violence when it does happen, which I’d say they succeeded at. It’s the highlight of the bonus features and a must-watch.
Finally, Doing Lines is a brief but fun extra which includes the cast reading the screenplay dramatically while classical orchestral music plays in the background. It’s bizarre but pretty entertaining, even if it’s only a few minutes long.
While the extras are a mixed-bag overall, Mediumrare Entertaiment knocked it out the park with the 4K UHD transfer, delivering a great HDR presentation, some sharp, clear visuals and a solid section of audio mixes. If you enjoyed this earlier in the year when it was playing in the cinema, you won’t be disappointed by how the film looks at home.
Disc/Package: 
