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.

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.

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/arts-life/culture/film/959839/cocaine-bear-asinine-ursine-romp-proves-to-be-a-us-box-office-hit