Cocaine Bear and other intoxicated critters: the ‘true-ish’ story behind US box-office hit

Offbeat movie Cocaine Bear, which follows an American black bear’s cocaine-fuelled rampage, has proved to be an unexpected hit at box offices across the US.

“Universal’s horror-comedy… blew past box office projections”, said Variety, earning an impressive $23m from 3,534 North American cinemas on its opening weekend, and ranked second at the global box office, behind only Disney/Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Directed and produced by Pitch Perfect’s Elizabeth Banks, Cocaine Bear is “literally an entire film about a bear that goes on a mad rampage after ingesting a load of cocaine and it sounds absolutely wild”, said Cosmopolitan. But while cinema-goers might rightly be “a little sceptical at first”, early viewers have been “loving” the “truly chaotic” film.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The ‘true-ish’ story behind the film

The film is “partially based on true-ish events”, said Morning Brew, taking inspiration from a 1985 incident in which a drug dealer attempted to smuggle $15m worth of Colombian cocaine into the United States.

The dealer, a former narcotics officer named Andrew C. Thornton II, “opened his parachute too late”, said The Washington Post, after dropping 75lb of cocaine from a plane along the Georgia–Tennessee border.

It sent the 40-year-old into a “free fall from thousands of feet” and ultimately crashing into a backyard in Knoxville, “instantly killing” the dealer who was found wearing “a bulletproof vest, night-vision goggles and Gucci loafers”.

Months later, authorities discovered that a 175lb bear had found one of Thornton’s bags of cocaine and started eating it. The bear died “of what the coroner described as a stomach ‘literally packed to the brim with cocaine’”, creating a local legend that would eventually form the basis of the Cocaine Bear film.

What the critics said

The movie hasn’t exactly been a smash hit with UK film critics. The Telegraph gave the film one star, calling it an “asinine ursine romp” that proved to be a “Class A disappointment”, adding that it “doesn’t so much insult its viewers’ intelligence as actively libel it”.

The BBC’s Nicholas Barber gave the film a more generous two stars, but said viewers are likely to find themselves wishing the film could fulfil the “gonzo potential” promised by its “in-your-face title”. This “strangely timid” movie quickly “loses momentum”, said Barber.

The film has won more acclaim online, however, with Twitter users praising its offbeat subject matter and casting.

“Thanks to a super-funny ensemble cast, a funnier script, and great direction from @ElizabethBanks, #CocaineBear is a f**king hit. This movie is absurd in all the right ways & just flat-out funny as hell. Long live Cocaine Bear & above all, long live Ray Liotta,” wrote one user.

Another Twitter user wrote that Cocaine Bear “is exactly what you’d expect it to be, dumb fun!” Producer Steve Barton wrote that Cocaine Bear was his “favourite movie of 2023” and that he “loved every second”.

Stoned raccoons and other intoxicated critters

The Cocaine Bear “is not the only animal that has gotten into trouble and eaten something they shouldn’t have” of late, said the Daily Mail. And in the wake of the film’s release, wildlife experts have shared their encounters with intoxicated animals with The New York Times.

Gibsons Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, in Gibsons, British Columbia, took in a “dazed raccoon” after it was discovered in a back garden in 2018. Laboratory testing revealed the animal had “recently ingested marijuana and benzodiazepines”.

The rescue centre took in the raccoon until he had recovered from his drug-fuelled daze. “Suddenly he was alive and, you know, [he was like]: ‘Let me go home.’ So we released him,” said co-founder Irene Davy. She added that the animal was likely to have eaten edibles or a discarded end of a joint left in rubbish.

Vets in the US have also warned that they are seeing more cases “in which dogs have gobbled down edibles and discarded marijuana” in areas where the drug has been legalised, added the paper.

But humans “are not always the source of intoxicants”. Think Wild Central Oregon, which runs a wildlife hotline and hospital, regularly treats small birds such as cedar waxwings after they have become intoxicated from eating large amounts of fermented berries. “They look pretty wobbly,” said Molly Honea, and many “end up striking windows”.

Honea said that the treatment was to “stick them in the oxygen tank and get them rehydrated” before releasing the birds back into the wild.