Half Baked: Totally High Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Half Baked: Totally High Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Justin Dekker April 30, 2024

After 25 years, one has to wonder why now was was considered to be the right time for a sequel to 1998's Half Baked (1998). Meeting with some degree of financial success upon it's original release, Half Baked was part of a modestly crowded field of stoner comedies released around the same time in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The original film captured Dave Chapelle at the beginning of his career, just before he became a household name, with his energy and presence making the film as memorable as it was. It should come as no surprise, however, that Chapelle does not reprise his role in this low-budget sequel, though his character, Thurgood, is briefly referenced several times. While there are a few characters from that 1998 film who return to this picture, only Rachel True (reprising her role as Mary Jane) receives any substantive screen time, but even her role is minor. Lacking any significant carryover characters or questions from the original that demanded resolution, it seems that trading on the name recognition of the 1998 film while essentially recycling elements from it's plot is the required justification for its existence.

In the first film, a group of people need to raise a seemingly impossible amount of money in a short amount of time to help out a friend who's in a tight spot. Half Baked's heroes needed bail money. The sequel's leads need burial money. JR (Dexter Darden, The Maze Runner franchise) met his stoner pals Miles (Moses Storm, Arrested Development), Cori (Ramona Young, Legends of Tomorrow, Never Have I Ever) and Bruce (Joel Courtney, The Kissing Booth, Jesus Revolution) in high school. Now young adults, the foursome are still friends, still smoking pot, and in a financial bind. One fateful night, Bruce dies from smoking "The Holy Trinity", a mega-joint constructed by braiding together three normal joints made from the three strains of marijuana, after Cori warns that only "the chosen one" can smoke it and live. Now the trio has just fourteen days to raise the $40,000 needed to transport Bruce's body across the country to Passaic, New Jersey so that he can be buried alongside his departed parents in accordance with what they believe are his wishes. Since the trio admittedly spend every available dime on marijuana, it seems a Herculean task. They're starting from zero. Almost immediately after Bruce's death, a disgruntled employee quits his job at the Post Office in a destructive fashion and JR, who also works there, stumbles across two packages containing five-pound bricks of marijuana. Much to his delight, it's a particularly potent and hard-to-find variety know as "Biblical". The three friends now have a plan; move the marijuana as quickly as possible to pay off Bruce's funeral expenses and use the rest to get a new place of their own. Initially, everything seems to be going to plan and the cash is rolling in with plenty of time to spare. But as such an easy solution to a difficult problem does not make for engaging viewing, the trio rapidly runs afoul of multiple criminals, law enforcement, parents, and JR's new girlfriend, to complicate the issue and, in theory, add tension.

One of the issues hampering the film is it's villains. David Koechner (here playing a legitimate but unscrupulous dealer named Diesel) was excellent in his role of the eternally crude and crass Todd Packer on The Office where his extreme behavior and rants never failed to entertain. Here, while he delivers an excellent rant or two, even with a gun in his hand, he's simply not able to convey any real sense of threat. JR, Miles, and Cori seem much more afraid of JR's mom than they are of Diesel, a fact made obvious by every aspect of their performances. The other primary villain, Shadow (Justin Miles), is similarly far from terrifying. Even when armed and aggressive, JR has no qualms about mocking him and openly ridiculing him for his chronic halitosis, with a small quantity of saliva on his forehead as the only price to pay for his disrespect of an armed career criminal. Introducing antagonists with quirks is a staple for many comedies, but they still need to be perceived as credible foes, and in Half Baked: Totally High Diesel and Shadow need to threaten not only our heroes' finances but also their lives. All they really manage to be, though, is quirky.

Not only are the antagonists lacking, but laughs are in seriously short supply as well. As our leads get stoned, their antics are more of a "check the box" exercise rather than amusing. Cori's less-than-lucrative job as a content creator with a themed sex toy line lands more as intended to shock than to induce laughter, with a late-movie resurrection of some of those toys being painfully predictable instead of funny. The interaction with Mile's mother and her new boyfriend as the three look for a new place to live following Bruce's death is also devoid of laughter. Here, the dialogue is graphic and raunchy inducing cringe after cringe but not a single chuckle. Later in the film, as JR tries to make amends with his disgruntled girlfriend, the scene again unspools as cringey and contrived rather than enticing the laughs it so clearly wanted. Out of the entire cast, Moses Storm fares the best in terms of generating laughs, but even his success is limited due to the fact that he seems hemmed in by the script. A hilarious stand-up comedian, he simply isn't given many opportunities to cut loose, and as his best moment to do so comes at the end of the film, by then it is far too late.

In an attempt to add a bit more star power to this direct-to-video offering, comedian Joe Ross and child star Frankie Muniz (Malcom in the Middle) are added to the cast playing versions of themselves. Unfortunately, these appearances are squandered to a great degree. Ross slides into the back seat several times as a customer for Miles as he sells marijuana. Since Miles is an aspiring stand-up himself, Ross offers advice on how to be a good stand-up while failing to be funny himself. Since Miles is the student in this scenario, he isn't allowed to be funny either, and the scenes fall flat. Muniz does an excellent job in his first scene where he's relaxed and charming as he prepares to sample some "Biblical". Not having to do much more than portray himself meeting some fans, it comes off as authentic and believable. He just doesn't deliver what is asked of him later and overall turns in a very uneven performance. Whether the issue lies with him, the script, or the direction is moot.

Also working against the film is the current legal status of marijuana and how the film documents its acquisition and sale by JR and his team. Marijuana is a legal and regulated product in the state in which the film takes place. While prices are sometimes high, the product is readily available. It's no longer quite the illicit substance that it was in the stoner movies of the past. Instead, there are numerous licensed dispensaries where the product can be safely purchased and enjoyed in a variety of forms. For this trio, selling marijuana looks easy and fun, being no more risky or dangerous than selling Girl Scout Cookies. Although what JR, Cori, and Miles are doing, selling stolen marijuana, seems edgy, and some people clearly aren't happy about it, the most legally risky part of their operation, it could be argued, is how JR sources the product; mail theft. Sadly, mail theft doesn't quite carry the same cinematic sense of danger, especially as JR seems to be able to take packages whenever he wants without any difficulty whatsoever. He handles that aspect with such ease, that the film doesn't even bother to show us how he gets the boxes of marijuana out of the building. When law enforcement finally does get involved, a deal for AJ and his friends seems so inevitable, he never even breaks a sweat or calls a lawyer.

Half Baked: Totally High Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Half Baked: Totally High has a slick digital look that keeps detail levels high from beginning to end. Facial particulars are consistently open for inspection, and environmental elements look excellent, too. A prime example is the brickwork outside the front door of Miles' mother's house which is resplendent with rough and palpable textures on both the surface of the bricks and the grout work. Fabrics, such as Mary Jane's sweaters offer realistically chunky and fuzzy yarns, as does the knit facemask that adult Cori wears when she is introduced. Primaries, such as JR's red sweatshirt pop vibrantly, as do the greens, blues, and magentas in the recurring animated transitional pieces. Other times, typically in outdoor scenes, the color palette has has clearly been manipulated to create a desaturated look. Skin tones appear consistently healthy, and black levels are acceptable but crush can be an issue.

Half Baked: Totally High Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Half Baked: Totally High is outfitted with a serviceable but underdelivering English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. The presentation here is very front-heavy, rarely employing any of the surround speakers to create a sense of immersion. The mood music lilting through the surrounds during JR's date is one of the film's most noticeable immersive moments, but even then it's a subdued moment. Dialogue is clear and typically centrally located. It's delivered without distortion or defect. Bass is sufficient to add a great bottom end to hip-hop tracks and ambient background music, and these intermittent musical interludes are when the track is at its best. In the moments when the music is allowed to dominate, the precision and fidelity of the track shines, injecting some energy into the sometimes listless film. Sound effects such as crashes, gunshots, and the like are all presented with satisfying realism. For what the film is the track does well enough, but it could have done so much more.

Half Baked: Totally High Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplementary material accompanies this disc. Lacking a menu, the film automatically begins when the disc is inserted into the player and will automatically restart once the credits are finished.

Half Baked: Totally High Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If a sequel to Half Baked really was necessary, Half Baked: Totally High likely isn't the one that fans of the original would have wanted. Carrying over a woefully small number of characters from the original film with the action in this one being tangentially related at best, it's little more than a recycling of ideas and gags that have been carried off better in the original and in other films of this ilk. As a fan of Ramona Young, it was exciting to see her appear here, but she's simply not given much of substance to do. Moses Storm, an excellent stand-up, could have and should have provided more laughs with either a better script or more opportunities to deviate from it. As it stands, his singular talents were wasted, as were the appearances from Koechner, Ross, and Muniz. Technical merits are solid enough for those considering a purchase. For most though, Half Baked: Totally High is not so much "puff-puff" as it is "pass". Skip it.