‘Cocaine Bear’ review: Coke addict animal kills — hilariously

The brand new comedy “Cocaine Bear” is strictly what you assume it’s — a bear inhaling kilo after kilo of coke.

Impressively, nonetheless, director Elizabeth Banks retains the powder gags recent all through, because the mammal maims her approach via a Southern forest protect. The film about blow by no means blows.

The hysterical movie relies on a real story within the loosest attainable sense. In 1985, a bear actually was found within the woods of Georgia — useless after devouring a drug smuggler’s stash of cocaine, price hundreds of thousands, that had been dropped over neighboring Tennessee from a aircraft.

On this insane telling, the animal not solely survives the binge, however turns into a ferocious addict who will kill anyone who will get in the best way of her subsequent snort. It’s whole lunacy — and very violent.

The movie, with a crackling script by Jimmy Warden, partly capabilities as a campy sendup of Nineties monster horror films, similar to “Anaconda” and “Lake Placid,” about lethal, supercharged animals in our midst. Then, with its energetic ensemble of weirdos and piles of medication, “Cocaine Bear” has a whiff of “The Hangover.” At occasions, the on-screen small-town thugs summon Sam Shepard. 

Sorry. I apologize. I’m overanalyzing a film a few bear who loves cocaine.

“We now have such good luck with nature!” a vacationer cheerily proclaims at the beginning of the movie, proper earlier than being terminally mauled by the beast. After that first casualty, the bear goes on a bloody rampage.

Crackhead Yogi has gory run-ins with locals, cops, rangers and sellers, every another eccentric than the following. Keri Russell performs Sari, a decided mother who goes into the woods to rescue her daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and Dee Dee’s good friend, Henry (Christian Convery). 

The lazy ranger on responsibility is Liz (Margo Martindale), however she’s distracted as a result of her favourite parks inspector — and work crush — Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) is visiting that day. Brash Liz can also be coping with three no-good hooligans (Aaron Holliday, J.B. Moore and Leo Hanna) who scare hikers into giving them money.

Holliday, as Stache, is pretty new to main films, and his flip right here as a chatty insurgent is thrilling. He’s like an American model of Barry Keoghan in “The Banshees of Inisherin.”

Our two sellers, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich, fortunately again in type) and Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) are frantically attempting to get better their items, whereas Officer Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) chases them down and misses his new pet at house.

Sadly, “Cocaine Bear” can also be Ray Liotta’s ultimate movie. The gung-ho actor, who died final Could, is a scream as a long-haired, foul-mouthed drug boss. It feels proper that he goes out making us giggle.

Giggles abound in Banks’ second go at directing, after her much less profitable “Charlie’s Angels,” again in 2019.

A really humorous actress as properly, Banks is aware of assemble an incredible joke and shock with a punchline. And, not in contrast to Edgar Wright did in his early “Shaun of the Useless” days, she will be able to successfully stability horror along with her humor. This isn’t a gimmick, only for yuks — there are are some strong scares right here, made larger by the truth that the well-animated CGI bear appears to be like near actual.

Who knew that so early in 2023, we’d already be gifted the last decade’s reply to “Snakes on a Aircraft”?