Written by Mike Bruno
If you are too young to remember or lived your life under a rock for most of the ’70s and ’80s, now is your chance to understand what the rest of us have been laughing about for years. Cheech and Chong are back, but this isn’t their normal stage show; it’s a cartoon. I wish this had been around back when I was a young loadie puffing on my first pipe (a wood one I made myself in shop class) because the visuals highlight the comedy, giving the viewer the full force hilarity of Cheech Marin and Thomas Chong.
Besides Cheech and Chong playing an assortment of characters, this feature starts out following a genital crab as he smells reefer from deep inside the pubic forest of a working girl’s snatch. This crab then follows our two comic heroes as they make their way through each adventure blazing a trail of sex, drugs, and rock & roll.
Thanks to the Chamber brothers (directors Brandon and Eric, not the group that performed the 1968 hit “Time Has Come Today”) for putting this together. Taking segments from C&C films and tweaking them works them out so they can prop up the gag lines or jokes that are coming at you. This isn’t an easy task but with good direction and a great sense of comedic judgment this group of four (Cheech, Chong and the Chambers) pulls it off with an ease and smoothness that make changing from scene to scene as effortless as the changing of the tides.
My favorites are “Dave’s Not Here” and “Let’s Make a Dope Deal”, two skits any decent person who calls themselves a stoner should know. The comedy of being high is opening up to all parts of the world now, while back when these routines were written, the audience was large but largely underground. If your family found out that you were a toker, your life was considered “lost,” but if it weren’t for the efforts of Cheech and Chong, most of us would have felt more out of place than our families tried to make us feel. This is why, this animated movie needed to be made so that a whole new generation of Stoner Nation can grasp the concepts of what “pot humor” really is.
For those of you who have heard it all before, please don’t be fooled. They have updated all of their stuff so it isn’t just a complete re-hash. Small details have been added to get with the times, like in “Tortured Man,” a scene where an old man is captured by what looks like Nazis but aren’t, they want him to sign some papers—I know doesn’t sound funny, but it is—in the background the name of the place where the torture is taking place is a company called Halliburton, and at the end of the skit there’s an award plaque giving props to Veep Dick Cheney for best water-boarder. Small details like that add up and make for big fun.
I found myself laughing out loud at the old skits I used to burst out in tears to and just smirking at most of the new things they have come up with, giggling here and there. This movie I would recommend, and I would recommend it with two fat doobs, a bong load of the sticky icky, and a fat rail of blow just for the fuck of it. Cheech and Chong as cartoons, it’s about damn time.
PS: two lids to a joint, man. I roll big joints.
