Stoned Cinema — choice grade

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This article was published 13/10/2018 (2784 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

From stoner movies only a stoner could love to the up-in-smoke flicks that even sober-eyed critics like, all marijuana movies are about one thing — guys who just want to smoke dope but are required by some arbitrary, inexplicable exigency of the straight world to do something else.

To mark the upcoming legalization of weed, here’s a round-up of some fan faves and critics’ picks.

REEFER MADNESS (1936): An unworkable combo of pious morality tale and exploitational schlock, this so-bad-it’s-bad cult classic follows a gang of wholesome, lindy-hopping, soda-drinking youngsters who are lured into a reefer-smoking criminal underworld. Expect lots of maniacal laughter, shortly followed by attempted rape, manslaughter, insanity and suicide.

An “educational film” that seems to be getting a contact high from all the drug-induced depravity it depicts, this inadvertent satire later became a hit on the college circuit.

BONUS FEATURE: For extra kicks, try the colourized version, with its lurid purple, green and pink “marihuana” smoke.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID: “One of the most absurdly earnest exercises in paranoia you’ll ever have the good fortune to see.”

DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993): Richard Linklater’s impressionistic look at one summer day and night in 1976 Texas boosted the careers of its young ensemble cast members and set down the basic “Alright, alright, alright” persona of Matthew McConaughey. While this stoner-adjacent dramedy might seem aimless, Linklater offers an almost anthropologically accurate sense of high school hierarchies and 1970s pop culture.

BONUS FEATURE: A ‘70s soundtrack so zeitgeisty you’ll want to play it on eight-track. Linklater spent one-sixth of his budget on music rights, and it shows.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID: “It’s sincere without being dopey, honest without being mean, optimistic without being oblivious of how hard the future can be.”

FRIDAY (1995): Ice Cube and Chris Tucker just want to spend the day smoking weed on the front porch in this stoner buddy comedy from debut director F. Gary Gray. But fate — along with neighbours, family members, bosses and girlfriends — has other ideas. Partly as a response to gang-related narratives like Boyz in the Hood, Ice Cube wanted to give a fuller and funnier sense of the South Central Los Angeles neighbourhood he grew up in.

BONUS FEATURE: The original source of the “Bye, Felicia” diss.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID: “Dirty, offensive, infantile and may launch a few sanctimonious opinion columns. And I mean that in the nicest way.”

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998): The Coen brothers’ stoner-noir classic puts the high in high-brow. Jeff Bridges is The Dude, who gets into some trouble with a dodgy millionaire, a porn magnate, a criminal conspiracy and some German nihilists, while the Coens follow some tangents about masculinity, militarism and American decline. (Possibly. The Dude himself is uncommitted.)

While The Big Lebowski is not quite as marijuana-centric as some other stoner flicks, its overall mellow vibe is almost unmatched, from the trancey bowling scenes to the Dude’s supremely laid-back, non-beverage-spilling response to life’s rich pageant.

BONUS FEATURES: Almost too many to count — lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you’s.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID: “One of a kind.”

DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? (2000): Two sweetly stupid potheads (Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott) look for their car and somehow end up saving the universe in this sci-fi-stoner mishmash. Long on shambly jokes and short on, uh, narrative drive, DWMC offers conclusive proof that Kutcher is always better being dumb than smart (see: That ‘70s Show vs. Jobs). Though initially bashed by the critics (legitimately so for some of its transphobic and vaguely racist gags), it headed into the new millennium on DVD, with “Dude, where’s my … (whatever)?” becoming a handy cultural catchphrase.

BONUS FEATURE: Is it just me, or are ostriches pure comedy gold?

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID: “Any civilization that can produce a movie this stupid probably deserves to be hit by famine and pestilence.”

HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE (2004): A nervous guy (John Cho) and his sarcastic, rule-breaking pal (Kal Penn) get super-stoned and go in search of a White Castle outlet. A dopey mock-epic quest that involves such idiocy as a drugged-out cheetah, this fan fave also pulls off a rather smart take on racism. (Sexism — not so much. As with almost all stoner movies, women are either unattainable hotties or total buzzkills.)

BONUS FEATURE: Neil Patrick Harris’s surprise appearance as a coke-snorting, stripper-wrangling maniac basically allowed him to shred his wholesome Doogie Howser, M.D. image and launch his raunchier NPH re-brand.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID: “‘This night is about the American dream,’ Kumar promises, and you know what? It sort of is.”

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (2008): Starring a lot of Judd Apatow regulars and directed by David Gordon Green, this loosey-goosey comedy gets its groove from being possibly the first-ever stoner action movie — which is basically a contradiction in terms. The story hinges on a point now rendered null by legalization — the fact that you have to pretend to be friends with your dealer. Seth Rogen, playing a typical Apatovian man-boy, just wants to buy his weed and go but somehow ends up on the lam with his lovably loopy pot supplier (James Franco).

BONUS FEATURE: The brilliant Bill Hader is an old-school 1930s stoner (“Well, sir, I feel like a slice of butter melting on top of a big ol’ pile of flapjacks,”) in the black-and-white opener.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID: “The laughs — mostly crude, profane and drug-addled — are almost non-stop.”