Nice Dreams

This is probably Cheech and Chong's best movie. My daughters often ask me (well maybe not often, but once in a while) which one I think is funnier: Cheech or Chong? My answer is always the same: Chong is funnier, but Cheech is a better actor. This movie is a great example. These guys are very talented and very funny. I talk to people my age (the bottom rung of the Baby Boomer generation) and they still think of C&C as two burn-outs that made some movies. Do people think that Charlie Chaplin walked around with a tiny mustache and a cane? Did Jerry Lewis walk around knocking glasses over? They're actors. Maybe their movies weren't always the best, but C&C are two of the greats. And "Nice Dreams" is one of their best.

I saw this one in the theater when it came out in 1981.. I was 10 or 11 years old and I just loved it. Although I don't think I had seen it since, as a big fan of Cheech and Chong, I ordered the DVD from Columbia House to fulfill my membership obligation, since it was the only Cheech & Chong movie they had available.

Well it did not quite match what I remembered, I'm sorry to say. It was rather unpolished and unfocused, making the classic "Up in Smoke" seem like an Oscar winner in comparison. Despite an unforgettable performance from Pee Wee Herman and some laughs (if you're already a fan of C&C), this is one you can probably skip.

I swear when I'd watched Nice Dreams in 1994 I'd assessed it rather silly to my taste due the offering touches in a neuralgic matter at my generation on the eighties deeply devasted by those smoke and white dust on their lives, nowadays as ripened brain revisiting this uncanny funny comedy I manage split the subject of the main preposition that make you laugh upon a countless gags concerning two weirdo guys selling marijuana covered as ace cream.

The duo comics guys already had started in a successful thematic comedy in UP IN SMOKE, CHEECH AND CHONG"S NEXT MOVIE, in fact anytime they didn't logged out of those smokey characters whatsoever, they pursued in this track until the topic was utterly sapped, so Nice Dreams worthwhile take a look for tons of hilarious sequences, mixing a slight sexploitation orientation and the wacko guys around, as the fruit cop character Noodles (Tim Rossovich) often groping Detective Drooler at surveillance at night shift, what a priceless moment.

Beware when it reaches on the highlight sequence at panoramic elevator a naked Cheech in dire straits running from the menacing "Animal", so get yourself ready to see a mocking of those wild times which smoke and sniff were meaning of forbidden things, otherwise on current time quite normal, Cheech & Chong are unforgettable indeed, unfortunately just a couple of pictures were released on DVD in Brazil.

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 1994 / How many: 3 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5.

I found Cheech and Chong's "Nice Dreams" a well crafted piece work. Not only are Cheech and Chong's performances very strong, they are also backed by a strong supporting cast, including Paul Rubens and Stacy Keech. Not as good as some of their earlier work but still high grade stuff, in my opinion.

These guys made a terrific movie in their first try. It was an accident, but what happened was a combination of things. There was cool self-reference and the perversion of the buddy road movie. It has a looseness to it that was new to "mainstream" movies in those days. Yes, part of the charm was that this was a mainstream movie and it treated dope smoking as a trivial amusement. It was in a way, the "Thin Man" of dope.

Afterwards, these guys made nothing but drek, sort of a demonstration of the dullness that dope brings. These things aren't even watched any more by the doper crowd because market forces have moved to supply them with hipper, more supportive fare. So if you are considering watching this for almost any reason, you'll find better elsewhere.

That is, except for the appearance of Timothy Leary. In those days, there really were distinct drug cultures. Pot was originally a Black Jazz thing, appropriated by kids. LSD was for the spiritually ambitious. Coke for bored celebrities, Heroin for the ghetto. Speed for the fringe biker crowd. Sects formed around these in the 70s and they became icons for different "life style" choices, though that silly term would be invented later.

This movie was the first C&C that threw all drugs in the same barrel. Pot, coke and acid, all the same.

That last makes its appearance here, ushered in by Leary. I'm convinced that the world would be a radically different place today if he weren't so inadequately suited for the role he adopted: prophet of synthesized enlightenment. By 1980, he was a joke and already exploiting his celebrity status to earn a living.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.