**_Not funny enough as a comedy and too silly to take serious_**

In 1985, several bags of cocaine fall from a drug smuggling plane in the mountainous area of northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee. Near Blood Mountain, a mother black bear eats a lot of the cocaine and goes on a bloody spree as it menaces hikers, rangers, thugs, EMTs and cops.

“Cocaine Bear” (2023) is a campy creature feature inspired by the true story directed by, of all people, Elizabeth Banks. It was Ray Liotta’s second to last movie before his death on May 26, 2022. Keri Russell is on hand as the concerned mother of a tween hiker. In real-life the black bear weighed 175 lbs, but this was changed to almost 400 lbs for the movie.

The production unbelievably cost $35 million. I say “unbelievably” because this is a decidedly throwaway creature feature of the semi-goofy SyFy variety. The CGI is a little superior, but not enough to make any appreciable difference. I’m speaking as someone who enjoys some of the better SyFy flicks on occasion. A good example is “Sasquatch Mountain” (2006), aka “Devil on the Mountain,” which only cost $800,000.

Except for the lush scenery (shot in Ireland, locations listed below), this is decent but generally meh. It’s not humorous enough as a comedy, but you can’t take it serious either because it’s too goofy. It doesn’t help that Keri is the only female worth mentioning (as a footnote at that).

How this garnered as much attention as it did is a great mystery. “Grizzly Park” (2008) treaded similar terrain and, while far from a great movie, is more entertaining than this (at a fraction of the budget).

The film runs 1 hour, 35 minutes, and was shot south of Dublin, Ireland, in Barnaslingan, Powerscourt and, further south, Avoca.

GRADE: C-