Avis Metacritic

Cheech & Chong's first movie is still their best. The duo wrote the genial script about the never-ending search for great pot, and a good supporting cast co-stars.

The funniest of all the Cheech and Chong movies, UP IN SMOKE provides a feast of gags for the sympathetically minded.

Fairly consistently funny.

That’s the trouble at the center of the benign but tepid ganja-classic Up in Smoke: Its toking Abbott-and-Costello duo are so content to simply drift away in clouds of smoke that the audience is often left behind looking for the jokes.

And on this particular trek, the 70's duo find themselves in comedic situations which hit and miss in relatively equal measure.

In a brilliant reenactment of what must be one of their definitive routines, these Furry Freak Brothers from opposite sides of town proceed to get acquainted over a joint the size of a blunderbuss muzzle. It's a new classic among comedy-team encourters: hilarious rapport at first toke. [11 Oct 1978, p.B1]

As the most fun comes not from watching the movie but from recalling great lines later, it would seem that the audio success of C & C has not translated too well into visuals.

What’s lacking in Up in Smoke is a cohesiveness in both humor and characterization. Once the more obvious drug jokes are exhausted, director Lou Adler lets the film degenerate into a mixture of fitful slapstick and toilet humor.

In some ways this 1978 Cheech and Chong effort, their first feature, is the perfect doper movie—no one's straight enough to remember the punch lines. Director Lou Adler (the record producer) finds a few chuckles, but mostly it's amateur night.

Unfortunately, Up In Smoke winds up as a hapless attempt to wrap a few very funny Cheech and Chong routines around a tired plot of counter-culture cliches. [6 Oct 1978, p.19]