Up in Smoke

This one of the movies I never get tired to see, it gets better for every time I see it. There are a lot of enjoyable characters, like Anthony Stoner, Strawberry, Harry, Stedenko, Jade East, The Ajax Lady and of course The Man and Pedro, you name it, the whole cast is excellent and there is great chemestry between the characters. There is also a great rhythm and great music in the movie. Sadly it`s seldom that this kind of movies are being made to day.

The counterculture was long dead and ripe for retrospective satire. Into the opportunity stepped two pro comics who after trying other things, built these characters. When comics work up a world for years and then brings it to a movie, it bodes well. Mike Myers would follow almost precisely this formula later with "Wayne's World."

The jokes are still pretty funny, many of them. Not the stuff with the flumoxxed cops or the folks who inadvertently get stoned (and get the munchies). But the bits of comic timing associated with the guys as if they were on stage.

Two bits to watch out for. One is two incidental women. The first has a scene only a minute long. A girl comes in, mistakes scouring powder for coke, snuffs it up and has the most comic facial expressions I have even seen on film. This is one of those priceless moments in film. I hope IMDb at some point figures out some means to vote on particular scenes. This girl would in life become an addict and a bag lady.

The second girl has a bigger role: Zane Buzby is one of the hippie stoner cheesecake babes that join the trip. She's got a less flashy role, but in ad libs created most of the situations in which she appears. She would go on to become one of TeeVee's most attuned comedy directors.

So you can see this as two stage personalities that are good, with these two women, who are also as good, surrounded by some disposable situations and jokes.

But there is another something interesting. The end of this comic show is a comic show within, the guys as a rock band in possibly the best Cheech and Chong sequence of all their movies. Everything from about 20 minutes into the film to this is a journey to this show, I suspect that "The Muppet Movie" of the following year was influenced by this.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

The 1st half of this movie is laugh out loud hysterical but then the last 30 minutes are a complete bore. The 1st and best of the Cheech and Chong series of movies, stars Cheech as a poor Latino-American with nothing much going on other than his low rider car. Chong plays a privileged white hippie dude who doesn't want to do anything but get high. They meet when Chong is hitchhiking and Cheech picks him up. They end up smoking the largest joint that has ever been constructed! When they get pulled over for going 2 mph, the entire car is filled with smoke so thick that you could cut it with a knife.

There are a bunch of other funny scenes like when this girl snorts Ajax thinking it's cocaine or how their van's exterior is made completely of weed. The band stuff gets a little boring at the end but the movie as a whole still stands the test of time. Cheech's song "I'm just a Love Ma-cheen" will get stuck in your head.

Two stoners unknowingly smuggle a van -- made entirely of marijuana -- from Mexico to Los Angeles, with incompetent Sgt. Stedenko on their trail.

Although Cheech and Chong made several films together, they will probably always be best remembered for this one, their first. There are so many moments that have since become a part of pop culture. The use of War's "Low Rider", the smoking of the Labrador... when watching it for the first time you might feel like you have seen it before.

Those into drug culture may appreciate the film more, but being a stoner is certainly not required to laugh at the antics of these two luckless losers.

If rate this below 7 you will never understand the joys of the 70's. Feel sorry for the ones who dont get the innocence of the times and the fun of the party. No AIDS and no hate. Everyone just had fun,had no care about selling drugs ,just sharing, enjoying and living by the best words of the time "Rock and Roll" This movie was the perfect metaphor.