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Topic of the week: How well does a stoner comedy sequel play if you’re not, well, stoned?

Introduction: A few drug thoughts from the experts:

“The hard drugs are for the bartenders, the kitchen workers, and the bartenders’ friends.” --from “Certain Songs” by The Hold Steady

“What does cocaine make you feel like? It makes you feel like doing more cocaine.”
--George Carlin

Wooderson: Say man, you got a joint?
Mitch: No, not on me man.
Wooderson: It’d be a lot cooler if you did.
--Dialogue from Dazed and Confused

(I do acknowledge that it would be better if the above were an audio file as the written word can not do justice to Matthew McConaughey’s beatific smile as he utters the second line. Hell, his voice and mustache take on beatitude in that context. More accurately, his entire being seems to resolve into a haze of bliss when he utters those words. If it’s been a while since you had a hit of Dazed and Confused, for God’s sake, this column can wait for 102 minutes. Go watch it.)

Pot smoking and comedy seem to go hand in hand. (And the notion of self-serious “educational” films like Reefer Madness that pocket a puff of a single joint as the heralding of a violent, frenzied manic state that will quickly lead to murder and/or suicide carries that maxim to its logical conclusion.) But how well does a stoner protagonist actually play? Brad Pitt’s exquisite take on Floyd, the perpetually high roommate in True Romance is a perfect example of a sublime supporting performance. But what if he had been the lead? (The body count might have been significantly smaller).

It’s been a while since I have watched Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye so I can’t say for certain if Phillip Marlowe (as perfectly embodied by Elliott Gould) ever comes in contact with a joint himself, but there are those free-spirited nude-yoga hippie ladies across the way in his apartment complex, and the feel of the film is certainly one of a druggie lull hopped up with a burnout’s sense of paranoia.

Pot smoking and buddy comedies seem to go hand in hand, because if there is one thing that someone who is high can use, it’s another person off of whom to riff. Perhaps this is why I wasn’t the biggest fan of Gregg Araki’s acclaimed stoner comedy Smiley Face - I can never even keep the name in my head for long without resorting to IMDb - which does feature a perfectly modulated Anna Faris performance as a struggling actress/accidental pot brownie ingest-ee struggling to make it to an audition on time. It’s dramatically inert and nowhere near as engaging as it should be. None of the people she encounters, not even the omniscient voice of Roscoe Lee Browne inside her head, bounces that well off of her.

There are some interesting parallels among the three Chapter Twos - Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - chosen for this week’s column. All three were reasonably successful, grossing around $40 million in their respective day. In the first two instances this was slightly less than the first film did; in the latter case, this was twice as much as the first film made. All three had different directors than the first film in the series (as they will be mentioned again, they were Lou Adler, Danny Leiner, and Stephen Herek) and in a striking coincidence those four individuals stepping into the director’s chair - Tommy Chong, the Harold & Kumar writing team of Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg, and Peter Hewitt - were all making their feature film directing debut. The first two of those are writer/directors (who also penned the first films, Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, and Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle), but the screenwriters for Bogus Journey, Chris Matheson & Ed Solomon, were also returnees from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

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