Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin' Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin' Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov February 11, 2022

Tommy Chong's "Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin'" (1983) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Paramount Home Media Distribution. The only bonus feature on the release is a newly remastered vintage trailer for the film. In English, with optional English, English SDH, Spanish, French, and Portuguese subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

Welcome to Holland, Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton!

America’s favorite potheads, Cheech (Cheech Marin) and Chong (Tommy Chong), land in Amsterdam to attend a big film festival, though only as guests of some hotshot they have befriended at a party, not to participate in it and promote their work. Much to their amusement, at the airport they are mistaken for Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton, who have given their consent to officially participate in the festival and then unexpectedly cancelled their visit, but instead of immediately correcting the error, they decide to take full advantage of it.

Soon after, the very special guests from America are given the fanciest suite in the most luxurious hotel in downtown Amsterdam and told that they can have anything they want. Upon delivery by the hotel’s staff, they just have to sign the paperwork that is handed to them. To test the hospitality of the festival organizers, Cheech and Chong then make a coupe of big orders that give them a taste of what it is like to get high like kings.

Later on, in downtown Amsterdam Cheech and Chong go on a special tour that familiarizes them with a wide range of unique Dutch dishes whose main ingredients are illegal in their homeland. While feeling extraordinarily relaxed, they also agree to participate in a big press event where they almost earn the admiration the local reports but mostly confuse them with their answers.

While her supervisor isn’t around, a very friendly and remarkably insatiable hotel maid introduces Cheech and Chong to a new range of thrills too, though they barely manage to survive their entirely spontaneous séance with her. To clear their minds and regain their strength, the visitors then attend a fancy night club whose main act happens to be from America too, but instead its dimmed lights and possibly some of the cheap treats they try there temporarily block the ability of their minds to separate the real from the surreal.

After the man running the festival realizes that everything that could have gone wrong has gone terribly wrong and confesses that he is considering suicide, Cheech and Chong decide to stage a Dope-a-Thon to help him save his and the event’s reputation.

Broken into multiple uneven episodes, Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin’ clearly struggles to match the quality of the earlier films that earned its two stars their reputation. To be perfectly clear, Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin’ isn’t devoid of hilarious moments that justify spending ninety minutes with it, but as soon as one begins comparing it with the earlier films, the discrepancy becomes impossible to dismiss.

All of the troubles are easily traceable to the original material that Marin and Chong produced. It is rough, often underdeveloped, and as odd as it may sound at times even looking incomplete. It does not help that the budget Marin and Chong had to work with was very clearly mismanaged, too. Indeed, halfway through the Amsterdam visit the two potheads essentially run out of ideas how to embarrass themselves in hilarious ways, so to compensate for their struggle the film sends them back on the stage as conventional stand-up comedians doing acts featuring a great deal of improvising. Again, there are some decent moments in them as well, but the material in Up in Smoke for instance feels like it was conceived by an entirely different set of creative minds.

The supporting cast is instantly forgettable as well. However, someone clearly thought of spicing up the fun a bit because in one of the better sequences Kay Parker and Linnea Quigley pop up in front of the camera without having anything meaningful to do or say.

The rather average soundtrack was composed by George Clinton. Years later, Clinton went on to score such genre hits Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Wild Things, and 3000 Miles to Graceland.

Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin' Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin' arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Paramount Home Media Distribution.

It is pretty obvious that this film has been fully remastered because it looks every bit as impressive as Up in Smoke. If I had to guess, I would say that they were redone at the same time.

I did not see any troubling issues to report in our review. Aside from some minor unnatural density fluctuations in a couple of darker shots that could have been eliminated with encoding optimizations, the rest looks really, really good in 1080p. Delineation and clarity, for instance, are typically very good or excellent, while depth is about as good as I expected it to be. The current master is graded very well, too. Yes, saturation levels should look a bit better if this film is ever made available on 4K Blu-ray, but the current values of the primaries and the existing ranges of supporting nuances are very nice. Image stability is excellent. There are absolutely no traces of problematic digital adjustments. All in all, I was quite surprised how great the film looked on Blu-ray, so if you want to have a good copy of it in your library, do not hesitate to upgrade. My score is 4.75/5.00.

Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin' Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are three standard audio tracks on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0, Portuguese Dolby Digital 2.0. An English descriptive track is included as well. Optional English, English SDH, Spanish, French, and Portuguese subtitles are provided for the main feature.

The audio is very clear, sharp, and nicely balanced. It is exceptionally healthy too, so its dynamic potency is as good as it can be. This being said, the film does not have any material that could potentially test the muscles of your system, so keep your expectations low.

Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin' Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer - a newly remastered vintage trailer for Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin'. In English, not subtitled. (2 min).

Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin' Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong's least impressive work is in Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin', so I would say that this release should be of interest only to folks that feel an inexorable urge to own all of their films on Blu-ray. If you happen to be one of them, you will be pleased to know that Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin' has been recently remastered and looks gorgeous on Blu-ray. However, I don't think you will be pleased to know that someone made a decision to use a BD-R disc, rather than a standard pressed Blu-ray disc. This is an odd practice that should be discontinued.