Cocaine Bear was never on my list of movies to see this year.  However, for reasons that are truly beyond me (or to which I care not to examine), it received a great deal of attention.  Such has been the buzz it generated, leading up to its release and while it was in theaters, that it seems to have spawned a series of other movies about animals on drugs.  This is sad.  At the time of its release, I was saved from viewing it by Jesus Revolution.  Now there is as true a statement as can be written.  Now what some months have passed, and I have decided to catch up on titles that I did not see in the cinema, I circled back to Cocaine Bear.  It is exactly what I thought it would be.  In other words, I missed nothing.

Further proof that Cocaine Bear is nearly worthless is given in the opening shots when they display what Wikipedia suggests to do in the event of being confronted by a black bear.  This is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, of course, since the film is billed as a “dark comedy.”  Does it still count as such when I sighed more than I laughed?  At any rate, this based-on-true-events story starts with the real-life Andrew Thornton (Matthew Rhys) chucking bags of cocaine out of a plane then jumping out himself.  Because he knocks himself out as he exits the plane, his parachute does not properly deploy and he dies.  This is the last connection to actual events.  From here, we see Elsa (Hannah Hoekstra) and Olaf (Kristofer Hivju) amongst the woods, mountains, and babbling brooks of the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia.  As they are enjoying the idyllic surroundings, they see a black bear behaving oddly nearby.  Yes, this is the eponymous bruin.  It then proceeds to eat Elsa before a horrified Olaf.  We then cut to somewhere in Tennessee where a load of the illicit substance, and Andrew’s dead body, are found.  Detective Bob (Isaiah Whitlock Jr.) is on the scene, and he can tell that the entire shipment is not in this location.  He determines that it must be further south.  Thus, he leaves his new pet Shih-Tzu with Officer Reba (Ayoola Smart) and heads to Georgia.  Meanwhile, the person who is supposed to have received the drugs, Syd (Ray Liotta), summons one of his henchmen, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), when it does not arrive.  Syd is sending Daveed, along with Syd’s son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), to Georgia to look for the missing items.  Back in the area of the first attack, we meet nurse and single mother Sari (Kerri Russell).  She has a moment with her daughter, Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince), before going to work.  Instead of going to school as Dee Dee is supposed to do, she invites her best friend Henry (Christian Convery) over to her house so that they can play hooky.  Dee Dee’s intent is to go paint a nearby waterfall, you know, like most young teenagers do, and Henry is just along for company.  On the way, they stop by one of those informational signs you see in state and national parks in order plot their course to the falls.  They make two other discoveries.  The first is a package of cocaine, which they split open and sample.  So, yeah, this movie has that in it.  The next is the bear, who wants two things right now: drugs and to eat people.  This attack takes place near the ranger hut.  Inside is Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale), and she is excited for a visit from her favorite naturalist, Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson).  Not even the presence of the kleptomaniac Vest (J. B. Moore) and his friends can dampen her anticipation.  Sari also comes to the station, who walked in the door from work to a phone call from the school saying that Dee Dee had skipped.  It is the finding of a map with the waterfall circled that leads her to Ranger Liz.  Once Sari has made Ranger Liz understand that she is looking for Dee Dee, they, along with Peter, head off in that direction.  Not long thereafter, Daveed and Eddie pull into the parking lot.  They have an encounter with Vest’s gang, and find a kilo of the cocaine on one of their number, Stache (Aaron Holliday).  Stache claims to know where a quantity of the rest is hidden, so he takes Daveed and Eddie into the woods.  Finally, Detective Bob gets there, and he, too, starts looking around the area.  Look, I am setting up the bear fodder, okay?  Peter, Ranger Liz, and Sari are the next targets, the title character pouncing on them when they spot Henry taking shelter in a tree.  Ranger Liz takes the brunt, but later Peter, attempting to copy Henry’s tactic, is killed on a branch because he had stumbled into some cocaine.  While Ranger Liz flees, Sari takes Henry and runs.  Ranger Liz is later finished off, along with an ambulance crew, back at her post.  Detective Bob manages to meet Daveed, Eddie, and Stache at a gazebo, though the bear finds them there, too.  However, it is a bullet shot by Syd that takes down Detective Bob.  This comes after they have an encounter with the bruin, which had taken a brief nap on top of Eddie.  Syd remains unconvinced about the precariousness of their situation, thus he tells them to press on looking for more lost drugs.  His search takes them to a cave where the bear has taken Dee Dee, as well as a few more duffels of cocaine.  Henry and Sari locate Dee Dee here, along with a couple of high cubs, and starts heading back towards the waterfall at the end of the cave.  Before any harm can come to them, they jump into the water below.  So, too, do Daveed and Eddie, leaving Syd to be devoured by an angry mama and her offspring.  From here, everyone returns to their lives.

These are the basics of Cocaine Bear.  Indeed, it is a basic movie.  I see no difference between it and, for example, Jaws (1975).  The shark in that classic film may not have been on drugs, but it seemed to possess a supernatural aura that the movie imbues on the bear.  Not only is Cocaine Bear not all that original, it shows kids doing cocaine.  Granted, they eat it instead of snorting it, spitting it right out after doing so, but that is something we should not see under any circumstances.  You do not have to be a square Catholic like me to know that some things should not be filmed.  The idea, I suspect, is to suggest that if a couple of young teenagers found such stuff, they would try it.  On the other hand, if it is “realism” you are looking for in this kind of movie, then I would question your sanity.  The real problem is that the movie was made at all, and I place the blame on the idea that this is based on a true story.  If there is nothing wrong with the kinds of things you see in this movie, there would be little need for it.  We typically do not make movies about common events, deserving though they may be.  Instead, a film gives us, like Faith, the opportunity to show the ideal.  Rather, we get some moviemakers that want to drag society through the mud with a piece of cinema like this one.  What a waste.

Is it excusable that at the end of Cocaine Bear Sari tells Dee Dee that she is grounded?  This does not excuse the rest of the movie.  Needless to say, I do not recommend this one.