Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: R
Run Time: 2 hours 3 minutes
Stars: Tommy Chong, Cheech Marin
Director: David Bushell
If ever there were artists who were specifically, indelibly a product of their time, that would be the comedy team Cheech & Chong, whose stoned, defiantly profane celebration of America’s 1970s drug culture cruised through the period’s social barriers with bleary-eyed, munchie-chomping, doobie-lighting glee.
The Vietnam War draft was plucking young men off America’s streets, U.S. public figures were repeated targets for gunmen, and women were protesting just to get equal pay — but above them floated Cheech & Chong, oblivious to it all, wrapped in a protective, permanent purple haze.
Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong were the first rock and roll comic act (Bruce Springsteen opened for them). Their movies made more than $200 million at the box office (equal to some $1.6 billion today). Their record albums sold in the millions, and — perhaps uniquely for a comedy team — their singles (“Basketball Jones Featuring Tyrone Shoelaces,” “Sister Mary Elephant”) rocketed up nationwide Top 40 radio playlists.
Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie — mostly a career-spanning documentary; partly a feisty onscreen reunion — does not try to make the case that the team’s classic routines and rambling movies have much to say to 21st Century Audiences. But Cheech & Chong were unquestionably a cultural fulcrum, launching decades’ worth of memorable stoner characters from Jeff Bridges’ Big Lebowski to Otto, The Simpsons’ dazed and confused school bus driver.
Produced and directed by David Bushell (Dallas Buyers’ Club, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), the film opens with present day Marin and Chong rambling along a two-lane southwestern desert road in a ridiculously large black sedan with a silver cannabis hood ornament and a California “KP SMOKIN” license plate.
Their initial conversation is worthy of Samuel Beckett:
“Where in the desert, Tommy?” asks Marin, who’s behind the wheel.
“I don’t know, man” says Chong. “He just said the desert.”
“Well, the desert’s a big place.”
“He told me…he said something about a joint.”
They drive on for a beat.
“A joint,” Marin mutters. “Well, you got a joint?”
Turns out Chong, uncharacteristically, has no joint. But he scrounges under the passenger seat and comes up with some gummies, which the two casually ingest.
One can imagine the conversation as a pot-fueled adlibbed exchange from Up in Smoke or Still Smokin’. But decades later, the pair are mellow in different ways: Marin is 78, Chong is 86 (one of his daughters, Robbi, is the film’s producer). They’ve struggled, thrived, fought, split up, reunited, and split up again countless times in the past 50 years — and judging by some of the dialogue documented here, many of those old wounds remain raw.
Almost immediately, the film enters biographical mode. The guys talk candidly about their childhoods — Chong relating early encounters with racism; Marin recalling his sometimes-violent relationship with his father, a Los Angeles cop, and his difficult decision to move to Canada to escape the draft.
They meet up as members of a Canadian improv comedy group. Soon, they discover, of all the material they perform on stage, what gets by far the biggest laughs is drug humor.
Both Cheech and Chong like drugs. And they like laughter. Their formula is set.
There’s almost no footage of the team’s early performances, so vintage sound recordings are matched with animation. In the best Hollywood tradition, after years of struggle and abject poverty, they become overnight sensations thanks to savvy promotion from record producer Lou Adler, who manages to get their first single placed on radio stations nationwide.
Among the charming conceits of Last Movie is the choice to have Cheech & Chong occasionally pull over to the side of their desert highway to “pick up” figures from their past. Those hitching rides in the boys’ back seat include Adler, both of Chong’s wives — and, for one hilarious line, Thomas K. Avildsen, the film editor who was tapped to be the nominal director of the pair’s third, and largely unsuccessful, film.
As you can imagine, those backseat visits can get a little uncomfortable. Adler is happy to ride along while the story arc follows the team’s early success — and his essential role in it. But he says, “This is where I get off,” as the tale turns to Cheech & Chong’s first movie contract — negotiated by Adler — which paid them $25,000 each. The movie grossed more than $100 million.
Despite its unnecessarily long run time, Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie reaches its climax with unwelcome abruptness, just as the pair are beginning to explore the roots of their often-antagonistic relationship. Still, there is undeniable satisfaction in seeing the two old friends stroll into the distance, having finally found the joint in the desert they’ve been looking for.
Barely visible on the screen, Marin pauses by a parked motorcycle.
“Is this Dave’s bike?” he asks.
If you need that joke explained to you, then you might not be the target audience for Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie.
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