By Richard Winters
My Rating: 5 out of 10
4-Word Review: Stoners on the road.
Cheech (Cheech Marin) and Chong (Tommy Chong) have moved to Chicago and are working at a car wash, but when they accidentally destroy a customer’s car they are fired. The owners of the car wash Mr. Slyman (Cheech Marin) and Prince Habib (Tommy Chong) hire the two for another job, which is driving a limousine across the country to Las Vegas. The two stoners think it will be an easy task but are unaware that the seats of the vehicle are stuffed with illegally collected cash. The boys though are given no money for gas, so each time they have to fill up the tank they’re forced to do away with a part of the car as payment forcing them to eventually have to drive down the road with only the vehicle’s main frame left. However, along the way they give up the seat with the money in it to an old-time gas station owner (John Steadman) and when the Arab owners find out that the money is gone, they set out to kill the two, who have become lost on foot inside the burning hot desert.
Cheech and Chong’s fourth installment is a definite improvement thanks mainly to the fact that it wasn’t directed by Chong, but instead the reins were handed over to Tommy K. Avildsen who had worked as an editor on their previous two movies. The pacing is much better, the gags come about in a more rhythmic order and the scenes don’t seem to go on forever. Avildsen’s editing background clearly helps keep the pace going and it’s nice to have a bona fide plot versus just trying to string together a bunch of comedy bits like in the first three films. Here there’s a better structure and focus. Things are still quite zany and surreal, but at least weird stuff don’t just get thrown in for no reason.
Of course, there’s still the issue of why these guys are suddenly in Chicago. When we last left them, they were hanging out in East L.A., which served as the duo’s cultural and atmospheric background. If they are to move to a different city then we need to see if occur in the movie and not just between installments and there needs to be a reason why, which is never given. As I’ve explained before in my reviews of their past movies having each new film change the settings and their living circumstances so drastically makes it seem like we’re not really seeing sequels that’s progressing things forward, but more just starting things over from scratch. Same goes with Cheech suddenly having to do voice-over narration, which they had never done before, and in this instance added little and could’ve been skipped.
However, it’s at least funny. Watching these guys shivering in the snow is a good change of pace from they’re pampered beach surroundings. The way they destroyed the car as it goes through the wash had me laughing as did the dismantling of the limo. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, with Steve Martin and John Candy, is the most well-known movie for having two guys riding down the highway inside a skeleton vehicle, but this movie did it first and in just as hilarious way. A couple of other comic highlights are when the stoners pick-up Donna (Evelyn Guerrero), who’s hitch-hiking, and she brings along a bunch of Mexican illegals who crowd into the limo like they’re stuffing themselves into a bus. The scene where the two sit in a movie theater and watch themselves star in a porno film, that was captured without them knowing it, is another great moment.
The best thing about the movie though is that it features C&C in dual roles as they also play the rich Arab businessmen and it’s really impressive how these two can get into other characters and speak in completely different accents. They play the stoner parts so well that you start to believe that it’s really them and they’re not acting until you witness how seamlessly they can morph into other roles. Chong had me especially surprised as for a while I didn’t think it was him, he puts on a prosthetic nose that completely changes his appearance when he plays the prince, and it took me awhile before I caught on. Having them play the so-called heavies gives the movie a much-needed bump of energy and the only thing that’s missing is seeing all four in a scene together with some sort of over-the-top confrontation between them in the desert, which could’ve easily been done using trick camera work.
This is also the first C&C movie where the drug use gets played down. This was apparently Chong’s idea as he felt it had become too much of a prop and they needed to challenge themselves and prove to audiences that they could still be funny without it. I also liked how Chong goes through a bad drug trip while inside a restaurant as the negative side of taking drugs had never been shown in any of their previous movies, but here does at least get lightly touched upon, which helps create a better balance especially for young and impressionable viewers.
My Rating: 5 out of 10
Released: August 6, 1982
Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Thomas K. Avildsen
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 