Cheech & Chong, et la suite...

After seeing Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke, I thought that Still Smokin' would be just as hilarious. It turns out I was way wrong and I was very disappointed at the quality of this film. Among the awful cast, the transitions to and from dream sequences were so confusing that I wasn't sure which part was the actual film and which part was the dream sequence. Occasionally the film would make me start to laugh, but then Cheech would become some annoying character that I just wanted to slap. Cheech and Chong really let me down with this one- but I'm not too upset because there will always be Up In Smoke.

Let's be honest, Cheech & Chong weren't exactly artists, but some of their earlier movies were a lot of fun. This was their 4th or 5th movie, and it's basically a tired rehash of the same stoner jokes they were knocking out in Up In Smoke. Having said that, it is still fun to a certain audience; the same audience who like Beavis & Butthead or Jay & Silent Bob really.

It's not just the infantile humour, it's that age old story of 'loser makes good' that we all find so satisfying over and over again. While C&C don't really achieve anything in any of their movies, they do have fun not achieving it.

In this movie they end up in Amsterdam, where they are mistaken for Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton (obviously). You can pretty much imagine the rest of the movie as is. It's stupid, it's childish, it's juvenile - and that's exactly the point.

Being a fan of That 70's Show and liking it's Leo character who is played by Tommy Chong, I thought I should check out the movies I had heard about that he made with Cheech Martin. After viewing my first Cheech & Chong movie I am left with mixed thoughts.

Before I watched it, I looked at it's page on IMDb. Seeing it was full of low star ratings and negative reviews, I knew I had picked the wrong Cheech & Chong film. Still, I went into it optimistically but it turned out so-so.

I don't think there were any jokes that made me laugh out loud, but there were some that made me smile or very lightly laugh. Even though all the gags weren't good, the way they did it is still an original approach to comedy. If there were better jokes it could of been really good.

Tommy Chong is a very good actor in this movie. Even when it's not funny, Chong still does well acting wise. Plus sometimes he has this innocent look on his face which makes you feel sorry for him if you don't laugh. Cheech does OK. He's not as good at acting as Chong is, but still OK.

Overall this is an OK movie. You'll probably get a few laughs out of it, but you're not missing anything if you don't watch it.

Nobody else seems to know how to make a hilarious, easy-going film like Up In Smoke, and if this effort is any indication, it would appear that the duo don't really know it either. In fact, if I had to assess why Up In Smoke was such a classic in spite of its uneven pace, Still Smokin' would lead me to believe that it was purely a miraculous accident. But even without comparison to Up In Smoke, Still Smokin' is by any standard a complete mess.

The concept around which the film is based seems interesting enough. The stoner duo, playing themselves for a change, are invited to a film festival in Holland. The idea being that Holland, with its somewhat less Nancy-Boy approach to drug consumption, regards the pair as celebrities. Or at least, that is the idea behind one of the sketches. And this is where the problem begins. The plot, such as it is, loosely ties together a series of Comedy Company-style sketches that just don't work. Some of them, such as the interview with an adoring Dutch film critic society, smack of self-indulgence.

The one part of this film that comes close to working is the blind blues harmonica player. Chong literally comes onto the stage wearing some kind of brown paint over his face, and, tapping out a beat with his foot, blows into his empty hands. It is a lot funnier to watch than it looks on paper (or a monitor), and I still cannot watch a lot of Charles Bronson's scenes in C'era una volta il West without cracking up because of it. If the rest of the film had been like this, it would have been a major success.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film is based around such idiocies as a wrestling match with invisible opponents that goes on way too long, or a stage performance in which the stoner duo impersonate dogs. I can't remember if they really do such things as sniff each others' butts, but given how low and undignified this sounds in text form, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. What would surprise me would be the Paramount executives being fully sober and lucid when they greenlighted this mess. Seriously, did they even have a finished script when principal photography began?

In all, I gave Still Smokin' a one out of ten. It is not bad enough to be good, but it is bad enough to be just plain bad. Aside from the one funny skit I outlined above, the entire film was, and still is, a big waste of cash. I am not surprised in the slightest that the Just Say No movement picked up momentum shortly after films like this. They suggest quite strongly that marijuana might not be so harmless after all.

Cheech and Chong are invited to an international film festival in Amsterdam. When they arrive, Cheech is momentarily mistaken for Burt Reynolds. In true Cheech and Chong fashion, this guy they met at a party in LA (Patrick) got them tickets to this festival. This Patrick guy took the event promoters money and car, as well. The promoter is having trouble funding the event and is expecting Burt and Dolly to show up. Cheech and Chong inevitable fill Mr. Burt and Mr. Dolly's roles in the event. While staying in Amsterdam, all their needs are met for (inadvertantly and with comic consequences by the promoter) by just signing for it. When our heroes get bored of living the good life at the hotel (a debauchery combination of ganja, room service and "room service"), they hit the town. At the Bvlgar Café, they stop to eat the entire menu (consisting of multiple types of sensi and schrooms).

The movie is pretty straight forward. It is a basic fish out of water story. Cheech and Chong are dropped in a nonsensical situation in a foreign country. The rest of the movie is a collage of day dreams and ideas (series of sketches or vignettes) for the show they want to put on for the promoter in Amsterdam. These include the following :

Cheech and Chong are super famous celebrities.

The last part is Cheech and Chong doing a live or live-like stand up performance at the "festival".

Red Neck stand up and the world's oldest blue singer, Blind Melon Chitlin.

Queer Wars.

Con Talk.

Dope-A-Thon.

The Harder They Don't Come movie.

Wrestling with Italian champion Bruno Hakoluki and his partner Ichi Scratchi.

This movie is probably the most straight forward of all the Cheech and Chong movies. I get the impression that the team wanted to see if they could go back to their stand up/live audience roots. I still think it is a step up from Things are Tough all Over and even the Corsican Brothers. I did wish that C&C did spend more time in Amsterdam than the virtual sketch comedy. For the most part the movie is amusing and a nice distraction. I find it hard to recommend this movie for non-fans of Cheech and Chong. Based on this fact alone, I would probably rate this movie as their least successful. I would only recommend this movie for the die-hard C&C fans.