Cocaine Bear is a new thriller-comedy film directed by Elizabeth Banks and stars Ray Liotta, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Keri Russell, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Alden Ehrenreich and Christian Convery. The film’s premise is very unique and weird which is why it has been getting so much attention. The film is about, “After a 500-pound black bear consumes a significant amount of cocaine and embarks on a drug-fueled rampage, an eccentric gathering of cops, criminals, tourists, and teenagers assemble in a Georgia forest.” The film became an internet sensation when the trailer of the film was released. The idea of a bear consumed with cocaine attacking people is hilarious and terrifying at the same time. So, is this film actually good or is it just taking advantage of a weird concept? Well, from the looks of it the movie is a decent watch as it has a IMDb rating of 6.5/10 and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 70%. So what works and doesn’t work in the movie? Let’s find out.
Cocaine Bear Reviews Roundup – Just About a Crazy Drugged Bear?
Stephen Romei (The Australian) – “This is certainly a different film. As edgy as it is, it could have been edgier, and the plot sags a little towards the end. But with the latest Ant-Man topping the box office, it wins points just for being different.” Original Score: 3.5/5
David Sims (The Atlantic) – “Cocaine Bear could’ve been a triumph if the jokes landed, but the zingers just aren’t up to the mayhem. And though the character actors are all capable of sterling work, there’s nobody to root for here.”
K. Austin Collins (Rolling Stone) – “The pleasure’s in the crass, goopy excitement of it. It’s kind of a put-on, but the movie gets by on being surprisingly blood-soaked where it counts.”
Donald Clarke (Irish Times) “This is a rare film that extracts humour from younger teenagers shovelling down cocaine on penknives, but elsewhere the tone is closer to something produced by Steven Spielberg.” Original Score: 3/5
Oliver Jones (Observer)
“The primary sin of Cocaine Bear… is its complete inability to balance the film’s twin directives of broad comedy and shock horror.”
Original Score: 1.5/4
Ty Burr
Ty Burr’s Watch List
“While “Cocaine Bear” mostly succeeds at the task, it’s still low-end comedy-horror schlock, no more and no less.”
Original Score: 2.5/4
Leah Greenblatt
Entertainment Weekly
“In every dumb and delightful way, it’s just about a bear, standing in front of the world, asking for more cocaine till she explodes.”
Original Score: C+
Bilge Ebiri
New York Magazine/Vulture
“Cocaine Bear is just as good as it needs to be. If it were any better, it probably couldn’t call itself Cocaine Bear.”
Gary M. Kramer
Salon.com
“Many of the set pieces in director Elizabeth Banks’ one-joke film are shocking because they are so boring. This film promises laughs and scares but manages to deliver neither.”
Esther Zuckerman
Bloomberg News
“It’s not a bad time, exactly, so long as you can tolerate copious amounts of blood. But if you’re going to do a Scarface-meets-Yogi Bear hybrid, it should have more than one note.”
Hannah Strong
GQ Magazine [UK]
“In the age of franchise domination and streaming service supremacy, there’s nothing quite like sitting down with a packed house to watch something outrageous on a giant screen.”
Glenn Kenny
AARP Movies for Grownups
“As a crass grind-house picture, the notion of a bear on a rampage after ingesting accidentally air-dropped cocaine (of 1985 grade, yet!) is solid. This is a studio picture with A-list names, and it does deliver goods.”
Original Score: 3/5
Venessa Wong
BuzzFeed News
“It’s too campy and self-deprecating to be an indelible work of cinema, but that’s not the point: It’s original, and it’s a very good time.”
Christy Lemire
RogerEbert.com
“An incredible blast, especially if you have the benefit of seeing director Elizabeth Banks’ insanely violent comedy/thriller with a packed crowd … “Cocaine Bear” will bring people together. “Cocaine Bear” will save cinema.”
Original Score: 3/4
Jason Zinoman
New York Times
““Cocaine Bear” too often feels like a one-joke movie, stretched thin.”
Peter Travers
ABC News
“A bear does cocaine and kills people. Director Elizabeth Banks revels in deliciously cheap thrills, but then treats her overqualified actors (Keri Russell, the late Ray Liotta) like bear chewtoys while the overcrowded script drifts into hibernation.”
Anthony Lane
New Yorker
“The excess, however gleeful, is that of a film paying anxious tribute to itself. Look, it seems to shout, here’s an apex predator becoming a homicidal junkie! What did you expect?”
Nick Schager
The Daily Beast
“The only snorts it warrants are of the disdainful variety.”
Ian Freer
Empire Magazine
“It’s a great premise but, over-populated by dull characters and a flat feel, Cocaine Bear is sadly a party animal that never gets started. Not quite a coke zero but close.”
Original Score: 2/5
Charlotte O’Sullivan
London Evening Standard
“While watching Cocaine Bear, you can actually feel your IQ level tumbling. Yep, it was right up my alley. I yawned through the first act, but spent the next hour either gasping or giggling.”
Original Score: 3/5
Sara Michelle Fetters
MovieFreak.com
“Cocaine Bear does not try to sell itself as something it is not. There is a bear. It is addicted to cocaine. It proceeds to kill several people. Gory, whacked-out weirdness transpires over an economical 95 minutes. That’s it. That’s the movie.”
Original Score: 3/5
Cary Darling
Houston Chronicle
“Simultaneously gruesome and amusing…The film never devolves into “Bearnado.” On the other hand, it’s no “Jaws” either.”
Original Score: 3.5/5
Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune
“A movie high on its own supply of mediocrity.”
Original Score: 1.5/4
Kyle Smith
Wall Street Journal
“The supposedly wacky bits aren’t funny, Ms. Banks evinces no gifts for suspense, and the pacing is all off. It’s hard to say whether it’s the script or the direction that is more responsible for the clunky, slow feel.”
Mark Kennedy
Associated Press
“Aping other genres of filmmaking, this one never finds its own voice or a way to integrate the ultra-violence with the dark comedy. It’s like a parody of a parody that director Elizabeth Banks has turned limp and pointless.”
Original Score: 0/4
Jake Wilson
The Age (Australia)
“Perhaps no actual movie could live up to the ideal simplicity of such a premise. Still, I went in with high enough hopes to be taken aback by the sheer awfulness of this campy horror-comedy.”
Original Score: 1.5/5
Deborah Ross
The Spectator
“This is basically a marketing concept put on screen. And it’s not that much fun seeing a computer-generated image attack sentient beings who may as well have been made out of cardboard.”
Robbie Collin
Daily Telegraph (UK)
“Doesn’t so much insult its viewers’ intelligence as actively libel it.”
Original Score: 1/5
Bill Goodykoontz
Arizona Republic
“Absurdity is what we came for, and “Cocaine Bear” could use even more of it.”
Original Score: 2.5/5
Justin Chang
Los Angeles Times
““Cocaine Bear,” like most movies that turn schadenfreude into entertainment, does a reasonably good job of both scrambling and satisfying your expectations.”
Danny Leigh
Financial Times
“At the risk of sounding like a buzzkill, it does also become clear that the film has no clue what to do with its one essential gag beyond repeating it.”
Original Score: 3/5
Radheyan Simonpillai
Globe and Mail
“The movie, about a doped-up black bear, is a much more lethargic affair, as if the apex predator’s supply was swapped out for some Ativan.”
Adam Graham
Detroit News
“Cocaine Bear isn’t smart dumb, it’s just plain dumb.”
Original Score: D-
Richard Roeper
Chicago Sun-Times
“Wildly entertaining and darkly hilarious B-movie blood-fest, which proves to be more than just a fantastically ridiculous title and a viral marketing campaign.”
Original Score: 3/4
Michael O’Sullivan
Washington Post
“Cocaine Bear isn’t so much a movie as an idea — a synopsis, an elevator pitch, a thumbnail description.”
Original Score: 1.5/5
Brian Lowry
CNN.com
“Give the kudos more to the concept than the movie, which mostly demonstrates, with apologies to an old marketing slogan, that things don’t always go better with coke.”
Nicholas Barber
BBC.com
“It’s definitely better than Banks’s last film, Charlie’s Angels, but you can’t help feeling that she has done the bear minimum.”
Original Score: 2/5
Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle
“Where Cocaine Bear fails is that there is nothing to keep us watching but the spectacle of the bear attacks. We don’t care if anyone survives, and we’re not invited to take anything about it seriously.”
Original Score: 0/4
Lovia Gyarkye
Hollywood Reporter
“No thoughts, just vibes.”
Jude Dry
indieWire
“Keri Russell and Ray Liotta add A-list appeal to this B movie cash grab, as director Elizabeth Banks proves she knows what audiences want.”
Original Score: B
Saskia Llyod Gaiger
Little White Lies
“Cocaine Bear transcends terms such as good and instantly enters the realm of beloved trash.”
Original Score: 3/5
Ellen E Jones
Guardian
“There’s a class A premise for a B-movie in here, but Cocaine Bear is just too sober to get high on its own supply.”
Original Score: 3/5
Alex Welch
Inverse
“A manic, headfirst dive into pure, unadulterated chaos.”
Soren Andersen
Seattle Times
“As a creature feature, Cocaine Bear isn’t bad. Not great, mind you. But not bad.”
Original Score: 2/4
Johnny Oleksinski
New York Post
“Impressively… director Elizabeth Banks keeps the powder gags fresh throughout, as the mammal maims her way through a Southern forest preserve.”
Original Score: 3.5/4
Tim Grierson
Screen International
“Director Elizabeth Banks’ third feature leans into the material’s trashy B-movie qualities, treating this oddball crime saga as a dark comedy that is only sporadically as clever as it thinks it is.”
Brian Truitt
USA Today
“Cocaine Bear only asks that you love the B-movie beauty and its fabulous beast.”
Paul Attard
Slant Magazine
“Cocaine Bear starts running on fumes almost immediately and peters out before the second brick of cocaine is even devoured.”
Original Score: 1/4
Clarisse Loughrey
Independent (UK)
“It’s bloody and grotesque, at times quite dark, but also surprisingly endearing.”
Original Score: 4/5
Alonso Duralde
TheWrap
“Never sacrifices the laughs for dramatic tension, nor vice versa, and those are very tricky plates to spin over the course of a feature film.”
Meagan Navarro
Bloody Disgusting
“Cocaine Bear struggles to sustain its euphoric highs and not all choices work. But the irreverent, zany fun, the underlying tenderness toward the characters, and a deeply committed cast ensure crowd-pleasing, unhinged entertainment will be had.”
Original Score: 3.5/5
The film is made on a budget $35 million and it is already opening with $20 million. So, regardless of what critics say about the film it will most probably recover its budget and turn out to be a financial success.
Cocaine Bear is currently playing in theatres near you.
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