Cheech & Chong, et la suite...

Two stoners named Cheech and Chong are invited to a Dutch film festival by mistake. Hmm... can you guess what stoners do in the Netherlands? Well, apart from being the most idiotic and stupid of the Cheech and Chong movies, this film does stand up pretty well compared to some of todays dope-movies. What it lacks in plot it makes up for with the hilarious sketches at the end(best part of the movie, no matter what anyone says). Some of the sketches are a little sick, so this film isn't for the easily offended. This film is pretty funny, although it has no plot which drags it down a bit. 7 out of 10.

"Still Smokin" isn't as good as Cheech and Chong's earlier movies due to the over-emphasis on vignettes, but it still elicits some laughs. This one has the pot-loving twosome going to Amsterdam for a film festival, where the audience is expecting Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton! From there, the buddies have a series of absurd adventures. The lengthy skits that they imagine drag on a little too long, but the actual shots of the sauna (plus Cheech's own "ET") make up for that.

I've heard that Amsterdam, and probably the entire Netherlands, is a really fine place. This movie really makes it look that way. It's not their best movie, but easily better than their follow-up "Corsican Brothers".

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.

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.

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.