We Have 'Cocaine Bear' at Home

Bear (2010), Recapped and Reviewed

Welcome back to the Criterion Garbage Collection. In our last installment, we recapped and reviewed Assassin 33 A.D., the Christian film where they shoot Jesus. Today, we’re watching Bear. There sure is a bear in it.

Times are tough. Not all of us could afford the pure, uncut pleasure of watching Cocaine Bear in theaters. Some of us had to cook our own stuff at home, and by that I mean I forced three of my friends to watch Bear (2010) with me for the price of four American dollars. That’s one dollar each. Which also happened to be the budget for the film itself. 

It’s free on Tubi, but I couldn’t get Tubi on my television screen, so there was an admission fee.

One of my Twitter followers suggested this movie after my last trash movie review. I was completely sold on the trailer. Bear is about two couples trapped in a car being harassed by a bear. But there’s something deeper at play. The bear wants something from these people. It wants to punish them. It wants them to suffer.

I must note that the bear in this movie, somehow, some way, also does cocaine, albeit involuntarily. Just as several distinct human civilizations built pyramids, so too has another, earlier film arrived at the timeless theme of “bear doing cocaine.” 

Well, let’s get into it. I won’t be making any gay bear jokes, because that’s low hanging fruit, and our titular bear is on a strict diet of man meat. 

We open on a ridiculously long car ride through the mountains. I wouldn’t mention it if it didn’t go on forever. We ride quietly with these people for several minutes through a winding road with the yellow “Mexican drug cartel movie” filter over everything. They’re going… somewhere.

A couple things get established: One of the women, Liz, has a huge rock on her finger, so we know she’s married. The cool woman, Christine, is sitting up front, guiding her boyfriend’s hand to her crotch. Harlot! The boyfriend, Budget Logan Lerman, is driving. He’s a musician. His brother, Great Value™ Will Arnett, is in the back with his wife. He’s a businessman.

Logan and Will (not their real names, which I don’t remember) have an insanely antagonistic relationship. It’s actively distracting how vile they are to each other. Here’s a Will impression. Look at this jackass, driving his little clown car through Clown Town. Little clown bitch. Dad never loved you, you know. Mom hates your clown guts, clown boy. Honk, honk! You’re nothing, Bozo.

Logan decides to take a spur-of-the-moment shortcut, making a wild left turn into a ditch and blowing a tire. “It should have been called Car,” one of my friends observed after what felt like twenty minutes of car footage.

We’re a brisk walk from the highway, it’s broad daylight outside, and the only thing wrong with our vehicle is a flat tire. Conditions are now ripe to be held hostage by a bear for several hours. 

Will naturally blames Logan for this mess, and we learn we’re supposed to be on our way to a restaurant for their dad’s birthday party. There are gifts and a cake in the trunk. I don’t know why we didn’t set this in a cabin in the woods or on a camping trip, but I’m no expert.

“Screwing up as usual,” Will says, I think. “Ruining things is the closest thing you have to a full-time job, I guess. You’re like if the notorious clown, Pagliacci, was also a worm.”

I’m getting pretty tired of being around these people when, wait, what’s that? A rustling in the bushes, a low grumble, a wet snout. At last, the bear arrives! And is immediately shot to death by Will who, of course, has a handgun. He puts every last bullet into this poor bear, who was just kind of standing around. “Eat or be eaten,” Will mutters. 

Werk.

Turns out, that bear wasn’t the bear, but the bear’s bear wife. We know this because when the second bear arrives on the scene, Christine remarks, “this one has balls!” Will’s gun is useless because he used all fifty bullets on the girl bear, so our heroes must retreat into our functioning vehicle for shelter. Yes, Logan fixed the flat. The car is fine.

Or at least, it was fine before Will drove it right into a tree, which is what happens next. Bummer. It would have been pretty swell to drive away in a car, but we can’t do that now. Clown genes must run in the family. 

The bear has them right where he wants them. He flips the car over and growls and such. The bear’s real name, by the way, is Blue. We need to talk about Blue. 

I know being a working actor is tough, so it pains me to say this, but Blue should find a day job. There is absolutely nothing in his performance that feels menacing or authentically threatening. He has round little ears and curious little eyes and a big bear butt wiggling all over the place. This movie would have been ten times scarier if they’d cast Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House. 

Just look at him. This is clearly an adorable, chubby bear being lured to various locations with peanut butter. Unacceptable. Unprofessional. An insult to thespians everywhere. All bears are of course related, and I imagine Blue has to name-drop his cousin, the Cocaine Bear, for clout at bear bars to score with she-bears. 

Pathetic.

The human actors aren’t much better, mind you. Logan has one face he makes in reaction to absolutely everything. I made a collage of “that face” here.

I love art.

The bear sort of loses interest and retreats back into the woods, which gives us the chance to flesh out our imperiled heroes. The girls get a private chat wherein Christine admits she’s been drinking and doing drugs. Liz hasn’t had sex with Will in several months, but wants a baby. Now is a great time to confide in a stranger that you’re an addict and that your man isn’t laying pipe like he used to. Just woman stuff. 

Everyone decides to walk around outside in any direction but toward the highway that’s mere feet away. Liz, who thus far has had approximately one nonfatal encounter with the bear, asks aloud, “why doesn’t it just kill us and get it over with?”

I feel the same way, Liz.

The movie does something interesting here. It suggests that perhaps the bear is done with these people and won’t show up again, but the damage has already been done. The bear was the mere catalyst, and the rifts he’s revealed between our protagonists will be what undoes them. 

In the darkness of the woods, their secrets will come out, and the truth kill them in a philosophical sense. Thus, the bear, without so much as lifting a paw, has emotionally mauled them to death by engineering the circumstances of their spiritual demise. Knowing that he’s broken them in this way will be many times more satisfying than sinking his teeth into them. In this game of man vs. nature, nature wins by being free of original sin, leaving our soiled Adams and Eves outside of Eden to rot.

Sike! 

Papa Bear’s back, and he absolutely destroys Christine. Like, beats her ass WorldStar-style, repeatedly slamming her face into the car and, I have to imagine, kicking her with his stubby bear legs. This is my second favorite part of the film, because either Blue finally clocked in to work that day or a man in a bear suit is beating the shit out of this woman. I commissioned this short film to better capture what seeing it felt like.

But my favorite part of the film is when they all take shelter in a big metal tube while the bear taunts them by flailing his big fake bear paw through a crack. The bear does this four times or so without the scene changing any dynamics until he simply goes to one side of the tube and drags one of them out of it like a sardine from a tin.

Funny how the movie is free on Tubi, but they are not free in the tube.

Okay. So, Christine is dead (RIP). Our three survivors must sit in the car and wait for the bear to inflict more trauma. Logan finds Christine’s cocaine baggie. He kind of shrugs and goes, “glad she’s dead.” The bear comes back to sniff around and they manage to electrify a golf club to prod him with before blowing Christine’s cocaine in his face. This causes the bear significant stress (he’s straight edge), so he leaves.

Honestly, Blue should have done some actual cocaine. Maybe we’d get more energy out of him.

Will comes up with the brilliant plan to run to the restaurant (a place that is indeed within running distance) to get help, leaving his wife and brother behind so they can have a discussion. I’m sure you know what’s coming. Yes, Logan and Liz hooked up once. No, Liz (a woman) isn’t over it. Logan can’t believe this. “You were a good lay, Liz,” he says. Please listen to the way he says this. It’s wild. We had to rewind twice.

Liz (female) cries a little. 

“Do you like me?” Logan asks. I like to think that if I were trapped in a broken vehicle with my brother’s wife while under siege by a grizzly bear, I would also say something along the lines of, “do you have a crush on me?” Liz (♀) absolutely does, by the way, which will make things awkward when Will comes back to rescue them.

Will, meanwhile, is sprinting toward the restaurant. All this film needed to be one of the all-time greats was a shot right here of a man in an unconvincing bear suit sprinting after Will like Usain Bolt. But we can’t have everything, I suppose. Just the bear necessities for us here in Bear (2010).

He makes it to the parking lot. I repeat, Will makes it to the parking lot. We see the cars and the building with a neon “OPEN” sign and everything. The film has another chance right here to enter Cinematic Valhalla. We needed a big fake bear claw to emerge from the darkness, cover Will’s mouth from behind, and drag him back into the woods. We don’t get that either. That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth. 

Instead, it’s implied that the bear tracked him down to the parking lot, grabbed him before he could walk inside, and dragged him back to the van where Logan and Liz are having their chat. Yes, the bear drags Will (alive) back to the van and drops him off without killing him. The bear is a sadist, you see. He knows that spending more time with Logan and Liz is a million times worse than being mauled to death.

“Did you fuck my wife?” Will asks mere seconds after the bear dumps him in the clearing. 

“Yeah,” Logan says. 

We learn Will is doing financial crimes and is probably going to jail, and then we learn that Liz is pregnant. It’s Logan’s, of course. “I’ve been trying to get that fat cow pregnant for five years,” Will says, before giving Logan a handshake. Sure.

Catching his second wind, Will comes up with a plan. They’ll use the birthday cake in the back as bait to lure the bear into the car, then close the doors behind him. “That’s so crazy,” Logan says, “it just might work.” It doesn’t work. Logan is mortally wounded and the bear gets to eat some cake. So I guess it was just a crazy plan after all.

Everyone agrees that was a poor strategy and the bear comes back and kills both Will and Logan. Very fair. 

Only Liz remains. The bear rears up, ready to end it all with one swipe, but he hesitates. He sniffs Liz and senses that she’s pregnant, I guess. “Oh, pardon me, ma’am,” the bear says in proper English.

Yes, Liz gets to survive. She walks offscreen, but does so in a silly way that’s reminiscent of that old bartender gag where they mime like they’re walking down a flight of stairs. 

The bear roars triumphantly on the top of the van. That’s Bear (2010). So kids, what did we learn? 

The lesson is simple. Mother Nature is keeping a running tab of your sins. You cannot do drugs, sleep with your brother’s wife, or do white collar crime and not expect to get mauled to death by a large bear. You can delay the situation with an electric golf club and cocaine, but your only true way out of the situation is to be pregnant. Otherwise, chomp, chomp! 

I give this three out of five jars of peanut butter. Happy birthday to Logan and Will’s dad.

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