Up In Smoke (1978)

In the annals of immortal comedy teams, the pairing of Pedro “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong might not rise to the level of, say, Nichols and May (or even Abbott and Costello, for that matter) but none were better at tapping into a specific subculture. Ascending to stardom on a cloud of pot smoke in the early ‘70s, Cheech & Chong‘s stoner hippies filled a niche in drug-addled, rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle brimming with comic possibilities.

Their allure transcended the “look, we get high, too” variety, although there certainly was some of that. The humor of Cheech & Chong came from a knowing place, sure, but their comic routines were broad enough to elicit laughs from even the biggest squares. Whatever the secret to Cheech & Chong’s success, it worked, and in 1978 they parlayed that appeal into movies with Up in Smoke for Paramount Pictures.

Up in Smoke isn’t what you would call … good filmmaking. It is amateurishly shot, clumsily staged and sluggishly paced, perhaps not surprising given that director Lou Adler, who had produced the duo’s comedy records, was no movie guy by trade.

And yet the picture is immensely likable, even without bong hits to soften up the audience. Up in Smoke was a huge hit. Shot over 30 days on a paltry $1.4 million budget, it ended up raking in more than $100 million. The year of its theatrical release proved to be a banner period for cinema slobs; Up in Smoke and National Lampoon’s Animal House combined to account for more than 20 percent of Hollywood’s movie profits in 1978.

The story is thin as a rolling paper, a pretext for a gaggle of Cheech & Chong sketches in which they toke it up and inadvertently stick it to Sgt. Stedenko (a terrifically agitated Stacy Keach), a zealous narcotics agent hot on their trail. Up in Smoke only comes relatively close to flirting with plot when our stoner heroes wind up in Tijuana driving a van made entirely of chemically treated marijuana (“fiberweed,” they call it) that Stedenko and his bumbling minions mean to interdict.

The movie is at its most gloriously dopey when it limits itself to car banter between Pedro DePacas (Marin) and the obliquely named “Man” Stoner (Chong). Chong pulls out a blunt the size of a small dirigible. He explains that it includes a fair amount of “Labrador“; his dog ate his stash and so Man had to follow the befuddled pooch around for three days with small baggies to retrieve it.

“Really blew the dog’s mind,” Chong admits. Cheech takes a hit and muses, “I wonder what Great Dane tastes like.” There are a few memorable bits featuring other performers – especially Tom Skerritt as a haunted Vietnam vet and June Fairchild as a woman who mistakes Ajax for cocaine – but the flick thoroughly belongs to its two leads.

Alas, Up in Smoke eventually loses its buzz once Cheech & Chong end up in that fiberweed van. Eh, who needs story, anyway? With a movie this uneven, undisciplined and downright sloppy, shambling charm counts for a lot.