Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie: Dwindling The Iconic Team

Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong formed one of the most successful comedy acts in the 1970s and 1980s. Their efforts spanned across records, live shows, and films. What these efforts had most in common was how they followed the duo’s irreverent style of nonsense comedy and countless jokes centered around marijuana. The direct influence of the end of the 1960s and how the political turmoil of the decade reflected on that generation, Cheech and Chong represented the ‘hippies’ and a youth without pristine opinions about drugs. In almost two decades, the duo established itself as a vital presence in the US pop culture. Their run would last until creative differences at the end of the 1980s, following their focus on film production. In Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie, the pair revisit their career together and discuss their trajectory.

Director David L. Bushell, most known as an executive producer of Dallas Buyers Club and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, debuts with a feature documentary on the iconic team. He uses the road movie device to create a literal metaphor for the long road the pair have been travelled together. Cheech and Chong drive a car in the California desert while encountering crucial personalities from their careers: Lou Adler, Maxine Sneed, and Shelby Chong. The setup acts as a straightforward reference scene of their films, such as 1975’s Up In Smoke co-directed by Adler and Chong. While the film blurs thin line between non-fiction and fiction, the segments in the car dwindle the impact of the rest of the film. In a sense, the standard structure of serving as a retrospective of artists’ careers is through Aristotle’s narrative. However, Bushell focuses more on the road trip gimmick rather than developing a balanced timeline.

Therefore, the film spends much of its time on Cheech and Chong’s previous lives with details that are not called back in its other moments. Meanwhile, similar to their first idea of what to call their first film, it becomes Cheech and Chong’s Greatest Hits. It is a procedural documentary of their main achievements in their career – from their Billboard Top 10 with a comedy album, to their box office hits, and their sold-out tours. The film revolves around their glory days and becomes a reconciliation encounter to solve their longstanding issues. It is a compilation of those moments with a notable treatment to avoid controversy beyond their beef. Besides the historical component of the duo, the film never quite approaches its subjects from more than just surface level. It is a film afraid of experimenting with ideas, a contradictory ideal to what the pair stood for in the 1970s.

The moments where the film uses animation to recreate passages are where it is at its best, as the animation deepens and elucidates a nonsensical tone that represents their comedic style. Unfortunately, these are few and far between and can only do so much to enhance the film. Its main focus is merely to recap an almost two decade career within its 2-hour runtime. Additionally, as the film transitions from scenes in the car to scenes from a white soundstage, the choice presents very little visually to the story. Ultimately, the film portrays a sanitized telling of Cheech and Chong’s story by the men themselves. However, the archival footage, combined with the animated segments, works better to paint a general picture of them. It feels that the choice to use the car and soundstage are tentative in emulating their sketches and bits, but proved to be not as effective.

In the end, Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie sounds and tries to offer audiences a definitive look at the duo’s career. That being said, bureaucratic directing and a staged gimmick to emulate their biggest hits does little to help its cause and only work to dwindle its impact and drag the film down.

Score: 40/100

*still courtesy of Renaissance*

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Pedro Lima

Brazilian film writer. He is also a producer and executive producer for Zariah Filmes. Member of the International Film Society Critics Association (IFSCA), International Documentary Association (IDA), and Gotham and Media Film Institute.