These doper movies play a game, a delicate game. The idea is primarily to make fun of stereotypes while at the same time exploiting them. They satisfy the relatively dumb viewers (like me) while making fun of them.
That's a long tradition in humor and especially ethnic and black humor directly derived from self-deprecating Yiddish vaudeville.
The story container is the same as in all sorts of similar projects: a collection of skits, some of which extend far to one side of this balance or another. Some are laughing with you, some at you.
So how you receive this has something to with whether you are the targeted demographic and the rest to do with your mood at the time. Since the nature of the audience, its edge, changes so quickly, the balance in the humor goes out of date soon after release, so these movies are poor rentals.
But I have to say that this one hit me right in the center. I liked it.
Here's an indicator. Early in the movie a stoner dies and becomes a ghost who can only be seen when his buddies are stoned on pot grown in his ashes. Perhaps an ordinary movie would just stop there.
The setup is that this guy rents Kevin Costner movies as a ploy to get sex. He is rebuffed so has to watch them alone, stoned of course. He sees himself in the movie, in the field of dreams in a baseball suit.
Cool folding there. Tells us we are with a writer or filmmaker who knows what folding is about. This is straight Bob Dylan.
There's some dialog about this folding. Then he passes out, catches fire, falls out a high window. Wait, he survives, stands up then gets creamed by a bus.
Remember that scene in "Something About Mary" when the dog was electrocuted then thrown out the window. Same space, friends. You laugh, then laugh at yourself for laughing taunted by something behind the actors.
It is a nearly perfect scene. See it just for that one risk.
Much of the rest is dumb.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
