Still Smokin

"Still Smokin" isn't as good as Cheech and Chong's earlier movies due to the over-emphasis on vignettes, but it still elicits some laughs. This one has the pot-loving twosome going to Amsterdam for a film festival, where the audience is expecting Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton! From there, the buddies have a series of absurd adventures. The lengthy skits that they imagine drag on a little too long, but the actual shots of the sauna (plus Cheech's own "ET") make up for that.

I've heard that Amsterdam, and probably the entire Netherlands, is a really fine place. This movie really makes it look that way. It's not their best movie, but easily better than their follow-up "Corsican Brothers".

Cheech & Chong are obviously not everyones taste, but I for one, think that they are two of a kind, that deserve more recognition from those in the, so called 'know'. This little gem is yet more proof, that these guys are as funny today as they where twenty years ago. Sex, drugs & hippy wierd stuff, at it's best.

I saw this on a double bill with "Downfall." Similar films in a way.

The idea here is that Cheech and Chong play themselves, skit comedians. That they are in Holland is incidental. The setup is there only so that they can do a stage show at the end.

In between we have "imagined" skits. Many of them. And a few of the episodes in the story proper reference the stage. For instance Cheech wants to screw the hotel maid and is (for other reasons) disguised at ET. He hides in the closet amid stuffed animals. It was the only laugh in this whole thing.

Yes, that's right, they have hundreds of jokes and none of them funny.

So you need to be content (if you've been tricked into watching this) with the notions of performance about performance. Every skit has this theme. So in this movie, we'll have a stage show, or a TeeVee show or a movie, each one of which makes fun of another.

The same notion was used in the next generation of stoner movie, "Wayne's World." Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Cheech and Chong are invited to an international film festival in Amsterdam. When they arrive, Cheech is momentarily mistaken for Burt Reynolds. In true Cheech and Chong fashion, this guy they met at a party in LA (Patrick) got them tickets to this festival. This Patrick guy took the event promoters money and car, as well. The promoter is having trouble funding the event and is expecting Burt and Dolly to show up. Cheech and Chong inevitable fill Mr. Burt and Mr. Dolly's roles in the event. While staying in Amsterdam, all their needs are met for (inadvertantly and with comic consequences by the promoter) by just signing for it. When our heroes get bored of living the good life at the hotel (a debauchery combination of ganja, room service and "room service"), they hit the town. At the Bvlgar Café, they stop to eat the entire menu (consisting of multiple types of sensi and schrooms).

The movie is pretty straight forward. It is a basic fish out of water story. Cheech and Chong are dropped in a nonsensical situation in a foreign country. The rest of the movie is a collage of day dreams and ideas (series of sketches or vignettes) for the show they want to put on for the promoter in Amsterdam. These include the following :

Cheech and Chong are super famous celebrities.

The last part is Cheech and Chong doing a live or live-like stand up performance at the "festival".

Red Neck stand up and the world's oldest blue singer, Blind Melon Chitlin.

Queer Wars.

Con Talk.

Dope-A-Thon.

The Harder They Don't Come movie.

Wrestling with Italian champion Bruno Hakoluki and his partner Ichi Scratchi.

This movie is probably the most straight forward of all the Cheech and Chong movies. I get the impression that the team wanted to see if they could go back to their stand up/live audience roots. I still think it is a step up from Things are Tough all Over and even the Corsican Brothers. I did wish that C&C did spend more time in Amsterdam than the virtual sketch comedy. For the most part the movie is amusing and a nice distraction. I find it hard to recommend this movie for non-fans of Cheech and Chong. Based on this fact alone, I would probably rate this movie as their least successful. I would only recommend this movie for the die-hard C&C fans.

After seeing Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke, I thought that Still Smokin' would be just as hilarious. It turns out I was way wrong and I was very disappointed at the quality of this film. Among the awful cast, the transitions to and from dream sequences were so confusing that I wasn't sure which part was the actual film and which part was the dream sequence. Occasionally the film would make me start to laugh, but then Cheech would become some annoying character that I just wanted to slap. Cheech and Chong really let me down with this one- but I'm not too upset because there will always be Up In Smoke.