5 weird as hell takeaways from that weird as hell Cocaine Bear trailer
The Angry Retail Guy, the true story of an overdosing bear, and the triumphant return of Character Actor Margo Martindale
Film News Bear
Cocaine Bear. A powerful phrase, imbued with the image of god knows how many feverishly imagined narcotics-fueled maulings and deeply traumatized pic-a-nic baskets. And also the evocative bit of language powering the new trailer for, well, Cocaine Bear, Universal’s upcoming dark comedy that apparently hopes to do for bears and cocaine what another little movie did, lo these many years ago, for snakes and planes.
There is, as it happens, a lot to unpack in the just-released trailer for Cocaine Bear, one of the loudest and most aggressive movie trailers we’ve watched in recent memory. And while we’ve got plenty of time to prepare ourselves for the film’s February 24, 2023 release, it still feels like as good a time as any to dive deep into several of the weirdest takeaways from this two-minute, nineteen-seconds sensory assault.
Yep, that’s Scott “Angry Retail Guy” Seiss
Even before the titular coke bear shows up on screen, we get our first weird “Hey, it’s that guy!” moment, sending us racing to our phones to confirm that, yeah, that’s The Angry Retail Guy playing a paramedic. That is, it’s comedian Scott Seiss, who’s gained a great deal of well-earned viral fame over the last few years for a series of TikTok videos in which he plays a retail employee addressing customer complaints with frank honesty. (The hyper-intense soundtrack doesn’t hurt.) Per IMDB, Cocaine Bear is Seiss’ first appearance in a feature film.
The real “Cocaine Bear” died of an overdose, and is apparently on display in a Kentucky “fun mall”
As the trailer itself asserts, Cocaine Bear is “inspired” by true events, a phrasing that usually suggests a fairly hefty amount of bullshit underpinned by a smattering of reality. The true parts here are fairly light: In 1985, a drug trafficker did toss a load of cocaine out of a plane, and it did end up consumed by a bear. Rather than go on a superpowered rampage, though, the poor animal just did what anyone would do after eating 40 pounds of cocaine: Die.
After overdosing, the body of the bear was eventually acquired by Kentucky-based gift shop brand Kentucky For Kentucky—who also appear to have coined the “Cocaine Bear” nickname, by the by, along with the less-catchy “Pablo EskoBear”—who’ve had it on display ever since. So, less a fun story of ursine chaos, and more a reminder that humanity kills basically everything it touches, and then uses the corpse to sell fried chicken-flavored candles to tourists.
This is one of Ray Liotta’s final screen performances
It’s not clear yet exactly how many films veteran actor Ray Liotta had in the can when he died back in May, at the age of 67. (He’s got a few different projects that were listed as in-production or post-production at the time of his death, although release dates are hard to scrounge up.) But Cocaine Bear was certainly one of them, and will now live in perpetuity as one of the first things anyone sees when they check the Goodfellas and Field Of Dreams star’s IMDB page. So that’s something.
There’s no mention of director Elizabeth Banks anywhere in the trailer
As we alluded to above, the marketing for Cocaine Bear is clearly going the “Whoa, so crazy!” route, rather than attempting to sell this as, like, a critical appraisal of human-bear relations. That being said, we were a bit surprised to see that director Elizabeth Banks is completely absent—including even listing her name—from the trailer; we know that the 2019 Charlie’s Angels movie didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but between her work as an actor, and the success of her first feature, Pitch Perfect 2, you’d still expect Universal to try to get some pull from Banks’ name. But what do we know? Cocaine Bear is clearly the star of Cocaine Bear.
This is not the The Americans reunion we were expecting in 2022
That being said, we can’t help but notice this is a pretty good cast for a pretty silly movie: Besides Liotta and Seiss (and Isiah Whitlock Jr., who’d also be our first choice for who we’d want telling us we were doomed to be murdered by a cocained bear), the film also features an unlikely The Americans reunion between Keri Russell and Margo Martindale. Russell’s pink track suit and high-caliber hunting rifle are clearly trying to steal the show, but if we’re being honest, we’re a lot more compelled by the idea of Margo Martindale fighting off a drug-addled bear. (We also definitely wouldn’t bet on the bear in that scenario.) Update: We just now noticed that Matthew Rhys is the guy throwing the coke out of the plane. What a weird place for this cast to reunite!
Cocaine Bear claws its way into theaters in February 2023.
79 Comments
Sheeeeeeeit!
Look, you had me at “cocaine bear”
This will not be the first battle with a Cocaine Bear for character-actress Margo Martindale.
She better tell that bear to look up her up when he gets to heaven, because she won’t be there but her movies will
That has gotta be amongst my top 5 favourite ‘BoJack Horseman’ lines.
At some point after its death but before its stuffed corpse was put on public display the bear was owned by country music legend and cocaine afficionado Waylon Jennings.
What could have been…
No, that’s clearly “Marijuana Bear”. Possibly “PBR Bear”.
I can’t tell you how much sense that makes.
The wikipedia entry for the film claims that The Americans’ Matthew Rhys is also in it, but he’s not on the IMDB page for the film.
It could be an uncredited cameo. I froze the trailer at 0:28 and it does look like him.If this movie does take place in the 80’s like The Americans, I’m just going to have fun and pretend this was a secret assignment that was best forgotten.
In the film’s climax, the bear is defeated by the heroic sacrifice of Mail Robot.
Wait until you find out that the bear is actually an uncredited Noah Emmerich!
This looks fantastic.
It looks like it could be fun in a stupid way. Obligatory Cocaine Bear clip from the My Favorite Murder episode.
The bear’s last words were
This clip is the best argument against a 90 minute version of this story.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched this clip over the last year or so. It’s perfect.
Finally, a movie I actually want to see. Yeah, it’s trash, but it looks amusing as hell. Seriously, there aren’t too many movies I give a shit about at my age. One sure thing in it’s favor, I won’t be bored out of my skull like I have been so many times recently.
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So. This could be the most fun movie of 2023? What a screwy group of actors under the, um, tutelage of Elizabeth Banks. At “Cocaine Bear” I thought “crappy movie.” Now I think, when can I buy tickets?
The trailer is definitely fun but I have a sneaking suspicion that this is gonna be a Snakes on a Plane situation
Honestly, I’ll take it. Mainstream cinema has become so rigid and sanitized that I’ll take a blast of lol-so-crazy late-00s bullshit.
Same, definitely, I’m just getting flashbacks to the hype around Snakes
IIRC the hype was Sam Jackson’s tag line. Seemed like the entire movie was filmed just as a vehicle for “I’m tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!”
IIRC, They did significant reshoots after Jackson’s tagline went viral to lean into that whole vibe. Still was a dumb movie.
When I first heard the title I assumed it was going to be a creature feature with the bear mauling it’s way through a small town. The fact that it seems to be more fleshed out as a dark comedy about a a cartel losing it’s shipment seems more promising.
Where’s the dark part of the comedy? This trailer was practically Looney Tunes.
Did you actually SEE Snakes on a Plane?
Reminds me more of Piranha 3D which also had a pretty good cast somehow (and was fun)
Fair point, it could go either way
That was a fun movie.
I’m okay with that.
There’s more interesting stuff going on in that trailer than the entirely of Snakes on a Plane. This looks more like a comedy Cujo, with gangsters thrown in.
So it’s going to be a great movie to see with friends and sneak booze into the theatre?
They can’t even make a trailer for a movie about a bear on cocaine without giving away plot points these days
Meh. Look at old sci-fi movie trailers like Soylent Green, Silent Running or Planet of the Apes. You don’t need to see those movies after watching the trailers.Sure, Cocaine Bear may be a one-trick pony, but at least it’s engaging and makes me wonder how far does it go?
Is it too much to ask to be genuinely surprised by a coked-up bear every once in a while??
The sixth weird as hell takeaway: Why isn’t there a Coked Up Werewolf movie!?
Werewolves are fiction, idiot.
If werewolves are fictional then how come I keep seeing them at Trader Vic’s, Lee Ho Fook’s, and Kent?
Ah-oooooooooooooooooooooo
Hold on. I hear someone at my kitchen door.
Oh, dear, I’ve been mutilated!
Take your fucking star and get some beef chow mein.
Then who’s killing all the vampires?
Certainly not the Frankensteins. They’re in cahoots!
Maybe a wee bit too much use of the “monster dragging people to their deaths / maulings” trope for one trailer, but can’t deny that it looks as much fun as a movie about a coked-up bear should be.
The underpants gnomes in South Park had a better business plan.
This model of undermining your own product is pretty damn astonishing considering media companies are usually best in class at wringing money out of people.
I want to see Tar and Babylon.I *need* to see Cocaine Bear.
I’m going to see this opening night and I bet I laugh so hard I may get kicked out of the theater or the whole theater will be laughing as hard as I am.Movie of 2023! Let’s go!
Depends. How much cocaine will you be doing?
Tons!
That’s the spirit!
Get higher baby!
I’m fired up right now and all I’ve had is coffee!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Completely failed to mention that Ice Cube and O’Shea Jackson Jr are both in the movie
YOU DIED
Crack Gerbil >>>Cocaine Bear
This movie is giving off early 2000’s comedy vibes and I’m here for it.
this looks fucking great.
‘… we know that the 2019 Charlie’s Angels movie didn’t exactly set the world on fire’, and which got pulled from my local cinema after the first weekend.
OH MY GOD none of y’all told me the trailer needle-dropped Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel’s “White Lines”.Damn this trailer made my day.
Kinda surprised that of the 5 most surprising things listed here, one of them is not “that bear CGI still needs some work, maybe they can fix it up a bit like Sonic The Hedgehog.” I’m looking a this pretty-not-great CGI, kinda longing for an actor in a suit, and thinking in my Bernie-Feldstein-In-Ladibird-Voice “IT IS THE TITUALR ROLE!”
I think bad CGI is a valid aesthetic choice for a film called Cocaine Bear.
“humanity kills basically everything it touches, and then uses the corpse to sell fried chicken-flavored candles to tourists”The first half of that phrase may be true for all of us, but the second part is only true of Americans.
Kentucky for Kentucky is actually a real force for good in the Lexington area. They support and donate to many great causes. Also the drug trafficker and his group were based in Lexington so the is a Kentucky story!!!!
the fuck with that cast?? That’s also Jesse Tyler Ferguson from Modern Family. Ray LiottaKeri Russell (definitely sporting an Americans disguise look)Margo MartindaleO’Shea Jackson Jr.Alden EhrenreichJesse Tyler FergusonIsaiah Whitlock Jr.I know those aren’t all A-listers, but it’s pretty damn far from the group of has-beens you’d expect to appear in a movie called Cocaine Bear.
That is a solid cast list. I was already interested when I saw it on O’Shea Jackson Jr’s IMDB page months ago.Inject this film into my veins. People do that with coke, right?
okay, now THIS is freaking epic!
If this only opened 10 days sooner I’d have Valentine’s taken care of.
I just hope it does not glamourize cocaine usage. I remember it being a lot of fun.
We already got the amazing Justified Season 4 out of these events, so if this movie is any good it will just be gravy.
“along with the less-catchy “Pablo EskoBear””
The fuck it is. This is the rare situation where two nicknames are equally amazing.
Exactly! Cocaine Bear is simply a statement of fact. Pablo EskoBear is creative as hell!
‘The Americans’ was such a great show, and it was actually the Beloved Character Actress Margo Martindale joke on ‘BoJack’ that got me to check it out. The premise didn’t really grab me, but I’d heard good things, and I enjoyed Martindale so much playing herself that it tipped me over the edge.