By Richard Winters
My Rating: 6 out of 10
4-Word Review: Chong meets Cheech’s cousin.
Chong (Tommy Chong) and Cheech (Cheech Marin) have moved in together in a decrepit place that puts new meaning to the word pigsty. Chong doesn’t have any interest in finding a job and spends his days playing his electric guitar at an ear-splitting level that disrupts the rest of the neighborhood. Cheech does work but gets fired forcing the two to go to the unemployment office where Cheech meets-up with his old girlfriend Donna (Evelyn Guerrero). The two get-it-on inside her office, which soon gets her fired. She then calls Cheech later on and the two agree to a date at his house. To get Chong out of the way Cheech has him get together with his cousin Red (Cheech Marin). Red is getting kicked out of his hotel room for nonpayment, so Chong helps him get his stuff out including a 20-pound bag full of marijuana (in the edited TV-version it’s described as a bag full of ‘diamonds’). The two then spend the rest of the night meeting up with different people and attending various nightclubs before ultimately being kidnapped by some outer space aliens while Cheech sits home alone dreaming of his rendezvous with Donna, who to his knowledge, never gets there.
This is, in my opinion, the best installment of the Cheech and Chong film series and an upgrade from their first film. This one has the same cinema vertite approach as that one but is able to tie it in better with a more consistent atmosphere that at times becomes almost surreal. Chong travels with Red late at night and the goofy people they meet along the way becomes very similar in theme to After Hours, or at least the Los Angeles version of that and had it been amped up just a little more it might’ve been just as good and memorable but just misses the mark yet kooky enough to keep it engaging. Thomas Chong’s direction is leisurely paced, which helps add to the offbeat vibe and his character is more engaged. In the first film Chong was strung-out most of the time making him boring and giving all the funny lines to Cheech, but here it’s more equal, making it a true buddy movie. The drug use isn’t emphasized as much either and doesn’t come off like it’s promoting the use of it like in the first one.
Some of the set pieces are impressive especially their messy house, which is so dirty and unsanitary that it’s almost like an art form the way the production team got it to look that way. I’ve seen some cluttered places before in movies, but never in quite the authentic way as here as it seems great care was taken to give it a legit look and making the scenes shot inside the place both fun and jaw-dropping at the same time. There’s no doubt though that had slacker stoners with no cleaning skills moved in together it would end up looking very similar to the place here. I also enjoyed seeing their neighbor’s place, played by Sy Kramer, who’s overly efficient ways are a far cry from theirs and the confrontations between them needed to be played-up more especially after the two steal and destroy his car and while his vehicle does get returned to him it’s in a highly damaged state, but without seeing his reaction shot we miss half the comedy potential.
It’s fun seeing Cheech play dual roles, speaking in a voice that sounds entirely unlike his own and proving he’s a much more talented actor than one might initially suspect. Edie McClurg gets one of her best roles as a rich uppercrust suburbanite who with only a few drinks becomes increasingly ditzy as the night wears on. Paul Reubens is entertaining as a no-nonsense hotel desk clerk and Michael Winslow has some engaging moments doing ‘sound effects’ while inside the unemployment office and old man John Steadman laughing at every single thing Winslow does.
This film also supposedly is the final onscreen appearance of veteran actress Mary Anderson, who is probably best known for her work in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Lifeboat. Here she has an uncredited bit as an old lady inside a music store, but the woman is seen for less than two seconds and within a group of other people making it hard to fathom why she’d come out of retirement, her first acting work in 15 years, just to give off an annoyed expression for a brief second and then call it a day. The woman doesn’t really look like her either making me think that since Mary Anderson is a very common name, they got the wrong one and it’s a different actress entirely.
I also can’t end this review without mentioning a glaring continuity error in which the car that Chong and Cheech are riding in goes out of control and ends up crashing into somebody’s front yard but the fence surrounding the yard remains intact. However, for the car to have gotten onto the lawn it would’ve had to have crashed through the fence, so showing it with no damage at all makes no sense.
My Rating: 6 out of 10
Released: July 18, 1980
Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Tommy Chong
Studio: Universal Pictures
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 