Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie Blu-ray Movie Review

A drag of a reunion.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater April 29, 2013

With marijuana laws overturned in Washington and Colorado, and nationwide legalization an imminent possibility, now would seem to be the perfect time for iconic tokers Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong to make a red-eyed comeback. After a string of successful low-budget stoner comedies—Up in Smoke, Cheech & Chong's Next Movie, Nice Dreams, Thing Are Tough All Over, Still Smokin'—the two acrimoniously parted ways in the mid-1980s, citing the usual creative differences. Cheech went on to a slightly more serious solo TV and film acting career, while Chong took small parts here and there and found himself embroiled in legal troubles surrounding his son's bong company, including a short stint in prison. They regrouped in 2008 for a brief comedy tour, but Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie! is their first feature-length film together since 1984's The Corsican Brothers. Disappointingly, this is more of a rehash than an all-new hot-boxed, low-riding adventure; directors Branden Chambers and Eric Chambers have merely animated some of the most famous sketches from Cheech & Chong's comedy albums and previous films, with little original or exclusive content. I suppose the rationale went something like this: 1.) Stoners like cartoons. 2.) Stoners also like Cheech & Chong. 3.) Thus, stoners will definitely like cartoon versions of old Cheech & Chong bits. But that logic doesn't quite check out.

Don't bogart that joint, my friend...

Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie goes for a kind of grown-up-but-not-really-grown-up Ren & Stimpy vibe, with crude animation and non-stop gross-out gags. To wit, the opening scene features a louse called "Buster the Body Crab" who catches a whiff of some dank weed, detaches himself from the pubes of the roadside prostitute he calls home, and spends the rest of the movie trying to track down Cheech and Chong so he can suck on their THC-laced blood. Buster's quest for a high is the closest the movie comes to a narrative through-line; the rest of the film is a loose series of episodic sketches, some of which may have been chuckle-worthy when they first saw the light of day, but have long since lost their potency.

It raises the question: Who, exactly, is the intended audience here? Longtime C&C fans would probably rather just rewatch Up in Smoke—why bother with this cartoonified nonsense at all?—and if the Chambers brothers are trying to introduce Cheech & Chong to a new generation of hash-heads, they would've been far better off commissioning some fresh material. I mean, there's something oddly anachronistic about the sketch where Cheech and Chong go to a drive-in movie theater, an experience few viewers under 30 have ever had, or will ever have. Then again, that's always been part of the pair's appeal; they were old-school even in the early 1980s, when they were making comedy about early 1970s-style stonerhood. Back then, they were like a pair of pothead big brothers, hilariously awful role models. Even when they weren't particularly funny, they were, you know, funny, man. But now that they've got 30-year reputations as stoner legends, there's a certain level of expectation regarding any new Cheech & Chong output, a level that Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie doesn't reach.

The movie exerts a bare minimum of creative effort, giving old routines a needless new Flash animation shellacking. There's "Ralph and Herbie," in which the two play neighborhood mutts, sniffing out a poodle in heat and pooping out a fecal replica of Rodin's "The Thinker." (The Ren & Stimpy stink is all over this one.) In "Let's Make a Dope Deal," a baked gameshow contestant competes for "fifty pounds of Lebanese Blonde hash," while in "Sister Mary Elephant," a screaming Catholic school nun tries to keep order in class during a narcotics awareness demonstration. One of the few still-funny bits is "Acapulco Gold," about an shaggy actor in a commercial for the titular strand of weed convincing the director to let him do numerous additional takes, just so he can smoke one joint after another. Of course, there are a few musical interludes, like "Earache My Eye," which has Cheech stomping around in drag—complete with nipple tassels—singing about rule-breaking personal expression. For as progressive as some of the material was in its day, other sketches seem insensitive or worse today, like "Up His Nose," about a Jewish father and sos with stereotypically large- drawn schnozzes, or the Night Court/Judge Judy parody "Trippin' in Court," which features a butch-looking judge called "the Honorable Gladys Dykes."

It should go without saying that you really do have to be high to enjoy most of these sketches, and certainly to get any pleasure out of watching all of them in a row. The spacey deadbeat humor of "Dave," for example—in which Chong scrambles to flush all his drugs down the toilet, thinking Cheech, at the door, is a cop—is largely lost on the unmedicated. But that's a given. What's unexpected is how poorly animation suits Cheech & Chong's entire aesthetic. These guys made their names by playing hairy, sweating, farting, giggling hippies—the smells in their old films practically waft off the screen—and seeing them here rendered in sharp, clean outlines and cheery colors seems almost antiseptic, even when the movie is at its grossest.

Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie lights up on Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation that's generally sharp and clean and free of distractions. The film's overly simple Flash animation style might be unimpressive when compared to Futurama or Archer, but there's little that's technically wrong with the picture. Some of the hard lines look a little jaggy up close, and you might spot some fleeting banding, but that's about it—no blotchy compression issues, no harsh pixilation, no encode glitches, etc. From a normal viewing distance, the image looks extremely crisp, and the colors are punchy and vibrant. There are no real problems here, and I suspect Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie looks entirely true to source and intent.

Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The simple animation style is paired with a straightforward lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. It sounds like most of the dialogue here is taken from the actual vintage comedy albums—that is, it hasn't been significantly re-recorded—so there are moments when the vocals are a bit muffled, harsh, or peaky. This is at its worst during the "Ralph & Herbie" segment—where Cheech and Chong play dogs—but it's never an outright distraction. It just sounds...older. Of course, some additional sound effects have been worked into the mix, and you'll occasionally hear some ambience in the rear channels. This a very front-centric track, though, overall. The mix is at its best during the stoner rock musical sequences, which have a decent sense of depth and verve. The disc also includes Spanish and Quebec French dubs—in Dolby Digital 5.1—along with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentaries: The disc includes three commentary tracks. On the first, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong reminisce about the good old days and talk about how this new project came together; the second features directors Brandon and Eric Chambers getting into the nitty-gritty details with producer Lou Adler; and the third is a more laid-back affair with Tommy Chong and his son, Paris.
• 4.20 Mode: If you're so inclined, you can activate "4.20" mode, which simply plays the movie three times in a row, once with each commentary track.
• "Medical Marijuana Blues" Session with Blind Melon Chitlin' (HD, 5:07): Here, we get to see Chong in the recording studio, laying down his vocals as "Blind Melon Chitlin'."
• Cheech and Chong Slideshow (HD, 3:25): A self-playing gallery of stills from the cartoon mixed with vintage Cheech and Chong photos.

Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cheech & Chong's Animated Movie is more of a rehash than a comeback, cartoonifying some of the duo's old comedy album bits and film sketches. As much as this would seemingly appeal to the intended stoner audience, the once-classic gags are alternately too flat and too crass when sketched out Ren & Stimpy-style. There are three audio commentaries here, which might sway some longtime fans to a purchase, but most would be better off revisiting the original material and awaiting the oft-rumored Up in Smoke 2. At the very least, this release is tangible proof that the iconic joker-tokers are at last working together again; hopefully, their next project will have more of that hazy Cheech & Chong magic.