Elizabeth Banks noted that it might be the movie that could end her career. In contrast, the antics of the eponymous bear in Cocaine Bear have warmed hearts and delighted audiences everywhere. Especially since screenwriter Jimmy Warden was shrewd enough to understand that, with his creative liberties, he could make the fictionalized version of the bear survive the ingestion of roughly seventy-five pounds of cocaine. As Banks phrased it, “This movie could be seen as that bear’s revenge story.” From that angle, there is a certain “humans are assholes” slant to the film, with the unspoken reality being that people are responsible not just for fucking up their own environment, but those of the animal kingdom as well. After all, were it not for the avarice of a man like Andrew C. Thornton II that prompted such motivation to engage in high-risk drug smuggling behavior (particularly in the 80s, when Reagan’s top priority for “protecting” Americans was not AIDS awareness, but the War on Drugs), the black bear in question would have probably lived a long, healthy life.
The cocaine boom of the 80s wasn’t only a result of Latin American drug cartels (particularly in Pablo Escobar’s Colombia) ramping up production, but rather, a sudden demand for a drug perceived as far more “glamorous” than the likes of hippie-dippy marijuana or LSD. What’s more, coke became a drug deemed worthy of white yuppies like Patrick Bateman who wanted to stay out all night partying (whether or not arbitrary murder was involved was at one’s discretion)/enjoying their overpaid, privileged status. Previously, at its higher cost in the 70s, it was even deemed the “champagne of drugs” by none other than The New York Times Magazine in ’74, laying the groundwork for the surge that was to come in the 80s. By 1985, where Cocaine Bear sets its stage, everyone wanted a piece of that profitable cocaine selling pie. Including the likes of Thornton II, who opens the movie to the tune of Jefferson Starship’s “Jane.” Ostensibly coked out himself, Thornton II (Matthew Rhys) proceeds to toss duffel bag after duffel bag out of a crashing aircraft. He then blows a kiss to the interior of the plane before jumping out of it, only to knock his head against the top of the doorway prior to falling out. In real life, Thornton II was with a partner-in-crime, and dropped the “loads” because it was proving too much weight for the plane to carry. Thornton II also did manage to successfully jump out of the plane without bumping his head, it was just that his parachute failed when he did, instigating a free fall into the driveway of Fred Myers, the eighty-five-year-old man shown in an archival newsclip saying, “You could see that his main chute didn’t open so, I guess his loafers was too much for him.” This refers to Thornton II being found wearing a bulletproof vest and Gucci loafers (a status symbol of the day).
Before that, Banks shows us the first couple to encounter the resulting effect of Thornton II’s drop, as the coked-up bear attacks. This after Wikipedia is quoted like gospel at the beginning with a title card reads, “Black bears are not motivated by territoriality. They will seldom attack humans in their vicinity.” Black bears on cocaine, of course, are a different story. To further give the audience a sense of what a “menace” coke was to the government’s bid to kibosh its popularity, insertions of PSAs of the day are incorporated after the bear has its first bout of fun (its version of “fun” being not so dissimilar to the aforementioned Bateman’s). This includes the egg in a frying pan one featuring the old chestnut, “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs” and Paul Reubens a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman insisting, “It isn’t glamorous or cool or kid stuff” as he holds up a vial for the camera, somehow making it appear all the more seductive. Nancy Reagan adds, “The thrill can kill,” while a rep for the Narcotics Task Force of NYCHA declares, “Smoking crack is like putting a gun in your mouth…and pulling. the. trigger.” No one much heeded any such warnings in the 80s, when nightlife was king, and cocaine its reigning queen. That cocaine’s influence had even managed to infiltrate places like Knoxville, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri, the two initial locations the movie points out apart from the Chattahoochee Forest (not a fake name) is a testament to how saturated it had become even in the most “middle-of-the-road” parts of America. Like Chattahoochee, Georgia, where we’re introduced to single mother and nurse Sari (Keri Russell, looking practically the same as her Felicity days) and her preadolescent daughter, Deirdra a.k.a. Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince, of The Florida Project fame).
Upon entering Sari’s room to remind her she’ll be working that night, the viewer sees that the most 80s thing about the movie, apart from the cocaine, is Dee Dee’s décor, awash with posters of Depeche Mode, Billy Idol, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. When Dee Dee says she was okay with her mom picking up some extra shifts before she realized that the real reason she wants to is to be around her current boyfriend, “Ray the Pediatrician,” Sari mentions Ray invited them to Nashville for the weekend to see his band play. That offer is a major “no thanks” to Dee Dee, who, in turn, reminds her mom that they were supposed to “paint the waterfall” this weekend. Presumably, that means going into the forest with a canvas and some paints and pulling a Bob Ross in front of the waterfall in question. But the call of dick is far greater to Sari than making good on that promise, assuring they can paint the waterfall some other weekend. But what Sari doesn’t know is that the call of the falls is greater to Dee Dee than meeting the latest piece in her mom’s never-ending boyfriend smorgasbord.
In the meantime, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), a fixer for St. Louis’ premier drug kingpin, Syd White (Ray Liotta, RIP), has been asked by said employer to recoup the many missing kilos of coke that Thornton II dropped into the forest at a known spot where smugglers are supposed to leave the goods in the event of a plane crash. But more than just that, Syd asks Daveed to take his son, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), along for the mission to get his mind off his recently deceased wife, Joan, and to, furthermore, entice him back into the “family business” he left because Joan wanted him to. But, as Syd points out, now that she’s dead, no harm, no foul.
Among all these moving pieces of plotlines is also a cop named Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and his co-worker, Officer Reba (Ayoola Smart). Bob follows a lead on the missing cocaine to the forest while Reba stays behind to watch his “fancy” newly-acquired dog, Rosette (a running joke throughout the movie). The cast’s robustness is all in keeping with the need to add “meat” to a plot that’s fairly thin in theory, but that has been “bulked up” (or “Hulked out,” for a more 80s reference) for cinematic purposes. Despite the theoretical challenge of such a feat, Banks, having perfected her own acting chops in this type of absurdist comedy with 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer, seems more at home behind the camera than ever. And, of course, it never hurts to have “character actress Margo Martindale” on your side. In the role of Ranger Liz, keeper of the national park and forest, she manages to find herself in one of the most action-packed scenes featuring the bear chasing an ambulance to the soundtrack of Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough”—the theme song of cocaine’s effects, if ever there was one. That Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh was responsible for curating Cocaine Bear’s musical selection only adds to a sense of 80s authenticity.
As all of the divergent characters converge on one another in the same forest for varying reasons (most people involved want the cocaine though), the plot becomes increasingly more outlandish, providing the bear with plenty of prey to attack as it keeps feasting on whatever coke it finds. Among the additional characters is a random trio of friends who call themselves the Duchamps and roam the park randomly knifing people. As Ranger Liz puts it to Sari (who links up with her and a wildlife activist named Peter [Jesse Tyler Ferguson]) while in search of Dee Dee), “Watch your back. Pop-art punks pop up out of nowhere.” And so they do—by stabbing Daveed in one of the park’s public bathrooms. It’s Stache (Aaron Holliday) that Daveed and Eddie wake up after Daveed kicks the shit out of all three of them to ask where he got the brick of cocaine they found on him. From then on out, Stache becomes part of a new trio as they amble through the woods toward the alleged gazebo where the Duchamps hid the drugs.
Finally arriving at that geographical point in act three, the only thing missing from the denouement is an ultimate escalation wherein the bear goes on its greatest rampage yet against a Colombian cartel also in pursuit of the lost bounty. Alas, the budget wasn’t high enough for such things (and was clearly used primarily on making the bear look as realistic as possible). But, considering how Banks and Warden already turned a molehill of a story into a mountain, one can’t begrudge them too much.
They always say the truth is stranger than fiction, but, in this case, fiction based on the truth is strangest of all. Not to mention most vindicating of all…for the bear anyway. Whose real-life fate turned out to be even more tragic than just unwittingly OD’ing on cocaine through no fault of its own—no, the bear also had to end up taxidermied and displayed at a mall in Lexington, Kentucky and branded with names like Pablo EscoBear and Cokey the Bear. Perhaps a more effective PSA than anything actually broadcast on TV in the 80s.
Genna Rivieccio
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