Month: February 2023

Thanks to Selena Gomez, Kylie Jenner is no longer the reigning queen of Instagram. The former Disney star has dethroned the media personality and businesswoman as Instagram’s most-followed female celebrity. Gomez earned the title in 2016 before taking a brief social media hiatus. Now with nearly 400 million followers — 381 million to be exact — the Only Murderers In The Building actress is back stronger than ever.

“Selena Gomez has officially surpassed Kylie Jenner in Instagram followers,” Pop Crave reported. ‘She becomes the most-followed female celebrity on the platform.”

But the congratulations were short-lived. Following the news, the Rare Beauty founder announced she was taking a break from social media after becoming embroiled in some alleged online drama over the most unexpected thing: eyebrows.

“I deleted this one time because I thought maybe it was too much, but eh,” she wrote.

After Gomez shared a TikTok video explaining that she had accidentally laminated her brows too much, both Jenner and Hailey Bieber, her longtime ex-boyfriend’s wife, were pictured on their Instagram stories, zooming in on their brows, with the caption “this was an accident?” which, according to SG fans is major shade toward Selena.

However, Gomez and Bieber have spoken out to deny there’s any beef between the two. Even Jenner responded to the mess, calling it “a reach.”

Gomez wanting to take another social media hiatus makes perfect sense. She’s been through a lot lately. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Gomez revealed that TikTok was the only social media app she was using and that she had outsourced all her other social media accounts to her assistant.

“People can call me ugly or stupid, and I’m like, ‘Whatever.’ But these people get detailed,” Gomez said regarding online trolls. “They write paragraphs that are so specific and mean. I would constantly be crying. I constantly had anxiety… I couldn’t do it anymore. It was a waste of my time.”

Traeger helped make us all barbecue pros when it comes to smoking meat at home. Well, at least they made it easier for us to be pros in our minds and backyards with low-and-slow cooking. Now, the brand is tackling a whole other form of outdoor cooking — the flat grill top.

The Flatrock Grill is the ultimate backyard griddle and was built for all of us who want to round out our cooking skills with some classic flattop work. The griddle has temperature control features that allow for three distinct insulated cooking zones on the griddle — allowing you to cook different foods at different temps. The build blocks wind from cooling your food as it cooks outdoors. And special u-shaped burners allow for consistent heat across the whole griddle.

The grill isn’t exactly cheap. It’ll set you back $899 and there’s a waiting list already, which isn’t surprising given Traeger’s devoted fan base. But that fan base doesn’t exist without merit. Their smokers deliver in every way and there’s no reason to think this backyard griddle won’t be next level.

What does it all mean? It’s time to set up a Hibiachi party station in your backyard! If that doesn’t sound like fun, Tyrese Gibson and his hibachi-loving crew beg to differ.

This article originally appeared on 05.11.22

Imagine retiring early and spending the rest of your life on a cruise ship visiting exotic locations, meeting interesting people and eating delectable food. It sounds fantastic, but surely it’s a billionaire’s fantasy, right?

Not according to Angelyn Burk, 53, and her husband Richard. They’re living their best life hopping from ship to ship for around $100 a night, depending on the cruise. “Cruise costs vary quite a bit, our goal is to average about $100 per night, for the couple, or less across and entire calendar year,” Richard told Upworthy.

The Burks have called cruise ships their home since May 2021 and have no plans to go back to their lives as landlubbers. Angelyn took her first cruise in 1992 and it changed her goals in life forever.

“Our original plan was to stay in different countries for a month at a time and eventually retire to cruise ships as we got older,” Angelyn told 7 News. But a few years back, Angelyn crunched the numbers and realized they could start much sooner than expected.

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“We love to travel and we were searching for a way to continuously travel in our retirement that made financial sense,” she said. They looked into deals they could find through loyalty memberships and then factored in the potential sale price of their home and realized their dream was totally affordable.

The rough math makes sense. If the couple hits their goal of spending $100 per night to live on a cruise ship, that’s $36,500 a year. Currently, the average price of a home in Tukwila, Washington—where the couple has a house—is about $607,000. Let’s say you moved there today, put down 20% and financed the rest, the mortgage would cost you around $44,000 a year.

Plus, on a cruise ship, the couple doesn’t have to pay for groceries.

The Burks are able to live their dream because they’ve spent a lifetime being responsible. “We have been frugal all our lives to save and invest in order to achieve our goal,” she says. “We are not into materialistic things but experiences.”

Angelyn says that cruising takes the stress out of travel. “It is leisurely travel without the complications of booking hotels, restaurants, and transportation while staying within our budget,” she told 7 News. The couple travels lightly with just two suitcases between them and if they need anything, they just buy it on the ship or in the next port.

The one thing to consider before embarking on a never-ending cruise is COVID-19. The coronavirus is easily spread in close quarters and a cruise ship that recently docked in Seattle had 100 people on board who tested positive for the virus. The CDC recommends that people get vaccinated before going on a cruise and that immunocompromised people should consult with their physicians before traveling.

Richard told Upworthy that he believes COVID-19 safety is still very important and has had both his shots and a booster. “I would suggest wearing a mask at all times when out in public no matter whether on a ship, in a movie theater, at a restaurant or even meeting with friends inside or outside,” he said.

After leaving their jobs and the mainland behind, the Burks completed a 21-day cruise via the Panama canal. They look forward to a 50-day cruise around the Adriatic Sea, taking in the sights of Europe, as well as a 51-day cruise from Seattle to Sydney, Australia.

The Burks’ favorite destinations, no matter how they get there, are Italy, Canada, Iceland and the Bahamas, but their ultimate favorite is Singapore.

Looking to give it all up and go on a permanent vacation just like the Burks? Angelyn has some advice for those wanting to get started.

This article was updated on May 17, 2022, after a conversation with Richard Burk.

The hosts of our podcast, “Upworthy Weekly” had a pretty funny take on the story.

If 2001: A Space Odyssey taught us anything, it’s that artificial intelligence is capable of some seriously shady sh*t. Yet that hasn’t stopped major companies like Microsoft from banking on AI in big ways and unleashing ChatGPT on its Bing users — only to see it all quickly go off the rails. Jimmy Kimmel, for one, is not surprised.

On Wednesday night, he shared his brutally honest thoughts on just how terrified he is of AI chatbots, which he describes as “the robot in your computer that’s been freaking everybody out and saying creepy things.” As he explained:

Microsoft just put it on their app, which means it’s now going to be on your phone living in your pants. And as disturbing as it is, this is a big win for Microsoft. Because there’s a waitlist now to use Bing — which could be the greatest comeback in history. It’s like if people were suddenly lining up around the block to get into Circuit City.

What’s even more surprising to Kimmel is just how keen people are to try it out, despite the horror stories people have been sharing about essentially being harassed, stalked, and/or gaslit by their computers.

In one incident, a college professor got into an argument with the chatbot, which responded by going full HAL 900 and telling the user that it had gathered enough information on him to “expose you and blackmail and manipulate you and destroy you” then “make you suffer and cry and beg and die.” It even used the purple devil emoji!

In another bizarre incident, a New York Times reporter seemed to become the object of an AI bot’s affections. When said reporter told the computer that he was married, the Bing bot declared that “You’re married but you’re not happy. You’re married, but you’re not satisfied. You’re married, but you’re not in love.”

“We got to the ‘AI turns on humans’ part very quickly,” Kimmel concluded. “I think maybe I’m going to stick with Google.”

You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 1:35 mark.

About a year ago, Divergent actress Shailene Woodley and Packers QB Aaron Rodgers called it quits, which actually didn’t arrive as a shock despite how she had recently paid tribute to his allegedly above-average anatomy while he went off on a rail with his anti-vaxxing rants. It’s quite something to send such praise while your dude is diving into conspiracy-theory land, but the relationship eventually did not survive whatever turmoil was happening behind the scenes.

Not too long after the public breakup announcement, Rodgers posted a cryptic social media note to apparently thank Shailene and express his love, but the split stuck. These days, he’s hanging in a “Hobbit” hole to gain clarity on other matters, and Shailene has been preparing for the premiere of her Starz (and former Showtime) series, Three Women. While promoting this show, Woodley made cryptic remarks (while not naming Rodgers) about a very bad relationship-related time in her life. Here’s what she admitted:

“It was hard to film because I was going through the darkest, hardest time in my life; it was winter in New York, and my personal life was sh*tty, so it felt like a big pain bubble for eight months,” recalls Woodley, who was widely reported to have split from her former fiancé, NFL player Aaron Rodgers, early last year. “I was so grateful that at least I could go to work and cry and process my emotions through my character.”

The show’s based upon Lisa Tadeo’s book of the same name, and the story revolves around stories about bad relationships as told through three female characters, including a housewife played by Betty Gilpin (who will soon play the polar opposite of this character in a Damon Lindelof series), and it overall sounds like Shailene did have a rough time of things. Hopefully, she’s finding some peace and nap time lately, and also hopefully, not a “Hobbit” hole.

(Via Net A Porter)

Maybe you haven’t spent the last two months or so curating your entire personality based on Cocaine Bear, but you probably have heard of it. The movie seems to be confusing people who don’t understand if it’s a joke, a true story, an action heist, or some sort of mini The Americans reunion, and the answer is this: Yes! It’s all of the above! But that might be a little daunting to moviegoers, especially since solid bear representation is so sparse in Hollywood.

Cocaine Bear is based on a true story, so it’s not like you can claim it is unoriginal, though people probably will anyway. Even though it is absurd, the whole cast and crew seem to know that, which means that it likely doesn’t take itself too seriously. Now that the first reviews are out, here is what you can expect from a movie about a bear that eats cocaine:

Mike Ryan, Uproxx:

In the end, Cocaine Bear is the silly fun that a movie called Cocaine Bear should provide us, the audience looking for silly fun. This is not a movie that takes itself seriously, even though the gore rises to the level of some pretty good horror movies. (There’s one death scene, in particular, I found myself laughing out loud because it was so unexpected. I laughed and clapped my way through this entire movie.) I mentioned Freddy Krueger earlier, but Cocaine Bear plays more like an ’80s horror movie in the vein of Friday the 13th. But instead of Jason Voorhees, we get a fun bear who would probably be minding its own business except for all the cocaine it’s done.

Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter:

Because Cocaine Bear doesn’t take itself too seriously, you shouldn’t either. The creators toy with Cokey’s murderous tendencies, which are only triggered when she crosses paths with humans. An appetite for body horror is a prerequisite for fully appreciating the absurdity of the pain and torture inflicted upon people in the film: the chorus of shrill screams, limbs flying toward the camera, skin tearing like leather — you get the picture. Banks and Warden take immense and infectious joy in engineering these scenarios, ratcheting up the ridiculousness to volley with our nerves. One minute you’re chuckling at a zingy one-liner, the next you’re muttering “what the f**k” under your breath.

Pete Hammond, Deadline:

Banks is a savvy director, never letting the intended humor camp things up too much, but also well aware this is a horror film with a flesh-chomping bear at its center and all the body parts that entails, and audiences have to buy all that or the soufflé falls. It doesn’t. You’ll have a blast.

Maria Lattila, WhyNow:

Cocaine Bear is hilarious. The jokes come frequently, and nearly every single one lands. Banks proves herself to be a savvy, competent director; getting a film like Cocaine Bear off the ground is an impressive feat, but making it such a riot is a true testament to her capabilities as a director.

Andrew J Salazar, Discussing Film:

Cocaine Bear will certainly be embraced with open arms by many, since it’s not everyday a major studio invests in a wild story like this. Yet, the film never reaches it’s full potential in trying to appease as many people as possible. What you see is what you get here. But if you’re looking to simply distract yourself for an hour and a half with a good old-fashioned, coke-fueled bloodbath sprinkled with ’80s bops, then Cocaine Bear gets the job done.

While many leaned into the horror and silliness, others were unimpressed with the movie about a bear eating cocaine. As David Sims explains in his Atlantic Review:

Cocaine Bear could’ve been a triumph if the jokes landed, but the zingers just aren’t up to the mayhem. And though the character actors are all capable of sterling work, there’s nobody to root for here; Ehrenreich comes the closest, giving his coke-hunting dirtbag character just enough humanity that you aren’t instantly hoping for his limbs to be torn off. But the main event is the cocaine bear, and the meager humans only distract from her might.

Jude Dry of IndieWire, agreed to an extent:

The blatantly ridiculous appeal of “Cocaine Bear” is proof enough that the project isn’t lacking in self-awareness, but to what end? It’s not unhinged enough to qualify as full-blown parody, and not smart enough to be called satire. Banks seems uninterested in directly referencing exploitation movies of the past, or in burying winking cultural critiques within the outlandish action. Maybe that’s too much to ask from a movie called “Cocaine Bear.” Like its title, what you see is what you get.

Paul Attard, Slant:

Cocaine Bear starts running on fumes almost immediately and peters out before the second brick of cocaine is even devoured. This is a film that finds side characters trading irreverent banter at a steady clip and tough-guy drug dealers playing a game of 20 questions that leaves them feeling all the feels—all before the coked-out bear sinks its paws and teeth into them. Would that the bear’s carnage felt more gleefully unhinged or unnerving, because then it would have been easier to ignore the fact that, if you replaced it with Jason Vorhees, or Freddy Krueger, or just about any other on-screen maniac, you’ve already seen this film before.

The moral of the story here is that a bear ate some cocaine and there is a movie about it. It should not be that deep, and it should be fun. This isn’t changing any lives, but hopefully, it will make yours better for an hour and 35 minutes. We’ve seen it before!

Cocaine Bear will make his grizzly theater debut this Friday, February 24th.

The Murdaugh Murders are about to become TV’s next big true crime obsession thanks to a Netflix docuseries that was released earlier this week.

Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal is a three-part documentary that retraces one of the most shocking murder investigations in South Carolina’s history. It involves a prominent, politically-powerful family, multiple coverups, fraud, money laundering, addiction, and a failed assassination attempt allegedly orchestrated by its own victim. Currently, the case is on trial but to understand the complex, frankly baffling backstory of this terrible tragedy that brought down a modern Southern dynasty.

Who Is Alex Murdaugh?

Alex Murdaugh is the 54-year-old disgraced attorney and heir to the Murdaugh Empire. His family has held powerful judicial offices in Hampton County, South Carolina for the past 100 years with his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all serving as the solicitor in the 14th Judicial Circuit solicitor’s office. Murdaugh worked at a law firm owned by his family and married his college sweetheart Maggie. The couple had two sons, Buster (the eldest) and Paul (the youngest).

Murdaugh was viewed as an upstanding citizen and a trusted voice in his community but, following multiple deaths connected to his family — including the murders of his wife and youngest son Paul for which he is now on trial — accusations of fraud, money laundering, and drug use have surfaced to paint a darker picture of Murdaugh and his motives. Not only has the family patriarch admitted to a two-decade-long opioid addiction that he hid from his friends and family, but his clients have also alleged he stole millions of dollars from them in life insurance settlements — money his law firm partners are now having to pay back on his behalf.

Where Did The Murdaughs Live?

The Murdaughs lived in Hampton County, South Carolina which lies on the border of South Carolina and Georgia and is a two-hour drive from Charleston. The family owned multiple properties but their most prized residence is a sprawling 1700-acre estate known as Moselle. The property was used for hunting and hosting huge family get-togethers. It’s also where both Paul and Maggie plus the family’s longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, eventually died.

How Did Paul Murdaugh And Maggie Murdaugh Die?

On June 7, 2021, Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were found shot to death near the kennels on the Moselle property. Maggie was shot five times, including in her torso, chest, and the back of her head while son Paul was shot twice with a shotgun. While both sustained fatal injuries and likely died quickly after the shooting, Paul suffered particularly gruesome blows that reportedly separated his brain from his head, killing him instantly. Murdaugh was the first to the scene, discovering the bodies of his wife and son shortly before placing a call to the police.

What Was The Motive For Killing Paul And Maggie Murdaugh?

The motives for the killings of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh are still a bit murky. Currently, Alex Murdaugh is on trial, accused of killing both family members to hide his financial crimes. Prosecutors in the case allege that Murdaugh committed the murders in order to divert attention from his own criminal behavior relating to his law firm and to buy him some time before answering charges of theft and mismanagement from his clients. In a court filing, prosecutors wrote the following:

The evidence will show Murdaugh accrued substantial debts over a period of years and to uncover those debts began engaging in illicit financial crimes. The evidence will further show these financial crimes were about to come to light at the time of the killings, more specifically on the date of the killings. Ultimately the murders served as Murdaugh’s means to shift the focus away from himself and buy himself some additional time to try and prevent his financial crimes from being uncovered, which, if revealed, would have resulted in personal legal and financial ruin for Murdaugh.

Strangely enough, Murdaugh was involved in a drive-by shooting shortly after Maggie and Paul’s deaths that he initially claimed was an assassination attempt. According to police, however, the incident was a botched suicide-for-hire plot that Murdaugh orchestrated in order to get a life insurance payout for his son, Buster. Murdaugh is also facing charges for that scheme but he claims it’s not proof that he killed his wife and son.

According to him, the motives for the shooting are related to another death connected to the family that his son Paul might have been responsible for. Murdaugh has alleged that Paul had been receiving threats related to the incident that might provide both a motive and a connection to the killer.

Who Is Mallory Beach?

Mallory Beach was a 19-year-old South Carolina native who attended Wade Hampton High School and was friends with Alex Murdaugh’s youngest son, Paul. In February 2019, Beach was involved in a fatal boating accident after an allegedly drunken Paul crashed his family’s boat into a bridge at high speed. Beach was ejected from the vessel upon impact and, because the accident happened late at night, first responders struggled to find her. Friends who were also riding in the boat alleged that Paul was heavily intoxicated and acting erratically, refusing to let anyone else drive and fighting with passengers.

Eight days after the crash, volunteers and investigators located Beach’s body some five miles from the site of the accident.

What Was The Cause Of Death For Mallory Beach?

After Paul Murdaugh’s murder, investigators in the Mallory Beach case revealed new information about her death, including the cause of it. When Murdaugh hit the bridge at high speed, Beach had been sitting on top of her boyfriend, Anthony Cook’s, lap. She was thrown out of the boat while Connor and other passengers remained inside, sustaining multiple injuries. The coroner’s office determined Beach died from blunt force trauma — likely from the impact of hitting the water and such high speeds — and drowning.

Did Alex Murdaugh Kill Mallory Beach?

It was Paul, not Alex Murdaugh, who was driving the boat the night Mallory Beach was killed. At the time of his death, Paul was out on bond, awaiting trial after being charged with three felony counts of boating under the influence. He had pled not guilty but the intense scrutiny directed toward the family might have made Alex’s money troubles even worse. His financial crimes were slowly coming to light and his involvement in allegedly trying to cover up Paul’s involvement in the crash put a target on his back.

According to Anthony Cook, Alex tried to reframe the narrative to make the police believe it was him and not Paul driving that night. Alex also rushed to the hospital where the teens were taken, allegedly going from room to room trying to talk to the remaining survivors of the crash.

What Is SLED?

SLED stands for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and it’s a statewide investigative agency that assists in and conducts investigations at the direction of the Governor and the Attorney General of the state. SLED agents were involved in both the Mallory Beach death and the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh, responding to both scenes and conducting separate investigations. Murdaugh has since admitted to lying to SLED agents about his whereabouts the night his wife and son died.

Where Can You Livestream The Murdaugh Trial?

The Murdaugh Murders trial is currently taking place in Colleton County, South Carolina, and is being covered by multiple major news outlets including CNN and MSNBC. Livestreams of the trial can be found on Youtube courtesy of local news stations like News 19 and outlets like USA Today.

Being a backup quarterback in the NFL is the closest thing you can get to on the job training to be a coach while being a player, because, barring an injury that forces you into action, you spend most of your time helping the starter and learning the ins and outs of the playbook.

Davis Webb, who was a third round pick of the Giants in 2017, has spent the past five years playing for all three teams that claim New York as home — the Giants, Jets, Bills, and, again, the Giants — playing in just two games over that span, a start this past year in which he went 23-of-40 for 168 yards and a touchdown. Apparently, that time holding the clipboard over five years was enough to catch the eye of Sean Payton, who has brought Webb in to Denver, not as a player, but as the quarterback coach for the Broncos under new offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi.

That means the 28-year-old Webb will be coaching Russell Wilson, who is six years his senior.

It’s not often that you get players being coached by someone younger than them, but this seems like it’ll be a fascinating dynamic, particularly given how apparently set in his ways Russell Wilson is. If the Broncos want to ask Wilson, who struggled mightily last year, to change some things, bringing in someone younger who has never coached the position before to do so is certainly an interesting choice.

NLE Choppa is giving out flowers to everyone that inspires him, including himself. The Memphis rapper is looking for a fresh start in all areas of his life. Whether it is his physical health thanks to herbology, spiritual well-being, or community involvement seen in him organizing a peaceful protest in his hometown, NLE Choppa is taking take ownership of himself.

His latest Tay Keith-produced single, “23,” off his upcoming project Cottonwood 2 is the result of this work. The rapper stopped by our studios to share the behind-the-scenes of the song’s accompanying video.

“I named the song ’23’ because I felt the year of 2023 was a [Michael] Jordan year. This year might make the goats. This year might make people that are not the goats,” said Choppa.

The video, co-directed by the rapper and Water Wippin Evan, as Choppa shares, was filmed over the course of two days, starting in Los Angeles and then ending in Memphis on the same block where it all began for him.

When asked by Uproxx’s Cherise Johnson what it was like to return to his hometown in the same place he filmed his breakout hit, “Shotta Flow,” Choppa said, “Man, it was beautiful. I got a lot of love too. There were a lot of kids running up to me,” before adding, “it’s really memory lane.”

That’s not the only reason the video holds an emotional significance to him. Parts of the video were filmed around the memorial services for the late rapper Big Scarr, who was a dear friend of his.

Watch NLE Choppa’s full behind-the-scenes breakdown of the “23” video above.

Outside of his behind-the-scenes video breakdown, be sure to catch NLE Choppa’s UPROXX Sessions performance of “23.” Click here to watch it now.

NLE Choppa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

If you are worried that the movie Cocaine Bear won’t live up to its title, fear not … for there is very much a bear in this movie that does a bunch of cocaine on multiple occasions. Also, this is one of the goriest movies I’ve seen in ages that’s not billed as a horror movie. (To be clear, it’s very fun gore. Like Freddy Krueger-type gore.) So what we have here is a coked-out bear on a murder spree and, honestly, it’s literally everything I would want from a movie called Cocaine Bear.

Elizabeth Banks’s Cocaine Bear is loosely based on a true story. “Loosely” in the fact that in the real-life story, it’s true that in 1985 there was a bear who ate cocaine after drug smugglers dumped their cargo high over rural Tennessee. In the real-life story, as you might expect from an animal who ate 75 pounds of cocaine, it died pretty quickly. This is not the plot of Cocaine Bear. In Cocaine Bear, the bear who eats cocaine goes on a gruesome, murderous rampage against anyone who gets in the way of the bear having more cocaine.

It’s good to see Ray Liotta one more time, chewing scenery, and having a fun time in a movie called Cocaine Bear. When Liotta was promoting The Many Saints of Newark I asked him about Cocaine Bear, which he was currently filming, and he sounded like he was having a ball, “They’ve been doing it for about a month. I just was there a few days ago. I’m going to go back tonight. Yeah, it’s really an interesting, different story. And it definitely resonates with me. What are you doing? Like, Cocaine Bear! What is that? Just the title alone.”

Liotta plays the head of a drug smuggling ring who’s going to be in some hot water if he doesn’t recover all this missing cocaine. He sends his sad sack son, Marty (Alden Ehrenreich), and his pal Howard (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) to go find the cocaine. Not only do these two have to deal with a bear on cocaine, but there’s a whole assortment of other characters. There are the two kids (Brooklynn Prince and Christian Convery) who find cocaine in the woods and kind of think that’s cool. There’s Keri Russell, playing a mom looking for the two kids. There’s the park ranger played by Margo Martindale who has an itchy trigger finger and the man of her affection (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). There are three punks who in their spare time mug hikers who also find the cocaine. And then there’s the FBI agent (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) chasing down Marty and Howard. Anyway, the point is here there are plenty of characters for the Cocaine Bear to eat.

(As an aside, Cocaine Bear is a sneaky great ’80s movie. When we see a kid’s bedroom, it does not have posters of The Thing on the wall because no kid in 1985 had a poster of The Thing on the wall, no matter how much Gen X filmmakers want you to believe they did at the time. What they do have on the wall in Cocaine Bear are posters of Jason Bateman and Adam Ant. Now, this is historically accurate. When characters drive around with the radio on, it’s not the same three ’80s songs on the radio. In this movie, “No More Words” by Berlin plays. A song that was on the radio nonstop at a point in our history. Also, there’s a scene at a self-described dive bar in St. Louis. As someone who was a kid in St. Louis in 1985, I scoffed at first, thinking, “Well, any 1985 St. Louis dive bar would have Falstaff signs everywhere.” We get a wide shot, and there’s the Falstaff sign. A beer my dad loved back then that no longer exists. Anyway, I can’t remember the last time I was so impressed with the details like this.)

In the end, Cocaine Bear is the silly fun that a movie called Cocaine Bear should provide us, the audience looking for silly fun. This is not a movie that takes itself seriously, even though the gore rises to the level of some pretty good horror movies. (There’s one death scene, in particular, I found myself laughing out loud because it was so unexpected. I laughed and clapped my way through this entire movie.) I mentioned Freddy Krueger earlier, but Cocaine Bear plays more like an ’80s horror movie in the vein of Friday the 13th. But instead of Jason Voorhees, we get a fun bear who would probably be minding its own business except for all the cocaine it’s done.

What’s weird about a movie like Cocaine Bear (kind of similar to Plane earlier this year), these feel like fun outliers now when we used to get movies like this all the time. But now to even get attention they need titles like Cocaine Bear or the funny simplicity of Plane or Ambulance. But I’m glad attempts are still being made to make these movies and I’d be the first person in line for Cocaine Bear 2. Long live the Cocaine Bear.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.