Review of Cheech And Chong Collection: Organically Grown In USA (Box Set)

Introduction

Film comedy is replete with double acts, Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Hope & Crosby, Morecambe & Wise, Cannon & Ball. Ok, it hasn`t always been an illustrious roll call, but double acts have entertained down the years. The early eighties saw Cheech & Chong rule the slacker comedy roost, a sort of Bill & Ted but with added herbal dependence. Most people today will probably recognise Cheech Marin from movies like From Dusk Till Dawn, and television`s Nash Bridges. However, together with Tommy Chong, they made a series of film comedies as a couple of dope smoking dropouts, mooching their way through life in search of the next good time. Considering that I first saw Cheech & Chong on the Mickey Mouse 60th Birthday special (Had Disney seen any of their films?) I was pretty ill prepared for Cheech & Chong in full flow.

Christmas being the season of the boxset, this release presents five Cheech & Chong spectaculars to entertain and educate. In the boxset, you will find Born In East LA, Get Out Of My Room and Things Are Tough All Over. I didn`t, as I was sent only Cheech & Chong`s Next Movie and Nice Dreams to review. Frankly, just one disc would have been enough to get the full effect.

Next Movie sees Cheech & Chong living in a condemned house, annoying the neighbour, getting high, mooching off the state, getting high, and while Cheech tries in vain to hold on to a job and date the lovely Donna, Chong has a wild night on the town with Cheech`s cousin Red, while they get high.

In Nice Dreams, the two layabouts have cleaned up, hygienically if not pharmaceutically, and they are now amassing a fortune selling weed from the back of an ice cream van. The police are on their tail though, and their product is having an odd effect on the customers. They`re still getting high though.

Video

Next Movie is released on the Universal label while Nice Dreams is released by Columbia. However there isn`t a great deal of difference between the two transfers. Both are presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic ratio, both suffer from age and grain, and neither is particularly problematic. If anything, Nice Dreams looks a tad brighter and more vibrant, but it`s all your standard back catalogue treatment.

Audio

The sound for Next Movie is a simple DD 2.0 English track, while Nice Dreams gets DD 2.0 English and German. Mono or Stereo, it`s all front focussed and unremarkable. What masquerades as dialogue is clear enough. Next Movie lacks subtitles, but Nice Dreams makes up for this by adding every subtitle track imaginable. The sound also dropped out on Next Movie at two points in the film.

Features

No extras whatsoever on the two discs I received.

Conclusion

Having finally seen Cheech & Chong at their day jobs, I`m left wondering what all the fuss is about. I felt that I had entered a humour vacuum for about three hours, as I had to endure these unfunny, badly scripted excuses for movies. There isn`t a plot in either of the films, it seems as if they make it up as they go along. That sort of anarchic freewheeling improvisational style may work, but it helps when the material is funny. I laughed out loud just once during these two movies, when the gasoline soaked Chong attempted to light up a joint, but the rest of the films barely raised a smile.

If they could be graded on a scale of mediocrity, Next Movie was slightly more enjoyable, the relaxed style suited the flow of the film better, and none of the material seemed strained. It should be noted that both these films featured gross-out comedy before it became fashionable. Nice Dreams on the other hand seems to have a quotient of scantily clad females to meet, and its far more predictable in that respect. These are eighties comedies though, and all coitus will be interruptus, our heroes will come out on top in all situations, usually through sheer chance as they lack the motivation to accomplish anything and childhood toilet humour will abound. Nice Dreams is also notable if only for the fact that it turns Stacy Keach into a lizard.

However, the calibre of the guest stars should indicate just how funny these films are, and with Pee-Wee-Herman a.k.a. Paul Reubens, and Michael Winslow (The bloke who`s famous for making funny noises) of Police Academy fame, these films really are scraping the bottom of the talent barrel.

Lets face it, the only funny thing about Cheech & Chong is the name.