Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Kid Cannabis Blu-ray Movie Review

This is your Idaho on drugs.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 7, 2014

Coeur d”Alene, Idaho just can’t seem to catch a break. This breathtakingly beautiful northern Idaho burg, a stunning small city built around one of the most spectacularly gorgeous lakes in the United States, has repeatedly found itself in the news for reasons completely unrelated to its charms and touristy allure. The town (as well as its suburb Hayden Lake) became infamous as the unlikely center of Neo-Nazi activities for several years, activities which included some high profile trials which made national headlines. Not too long after that controversy died down, Coeur d’Alene found itself at the center of a less pernicious but no less newsworthy story, one which in some ways was even more unlikely than a bunch of Aryan wannabes parading down Main Street goose stepping and giving Hitler salutes. In what was simultaneously lauded as an unusual bit of American entrepreneurialism and decried as a perfect example of American youth out of control, a chubby Coeur d”Alene high school dropout named Nate Norman was arrested for having moved tens of millions of dollars of pot across the relatively nearby Canadian border, selling it at an enormous profit in his hometown in a scheme that netted the self-admitted stoner additional untold millions. Somehow this apparent slacker had put together a network of his buddies to do the drug running, managing it all from the confines of his bong adorned bedroom. Kid Cannabis recounts this not all that sordid tale (despite one rather gruesome murder of another drug overlord) in a freewheeling way that is at times rather surprisingly smart. The film doesn’t haven’t the verité leanings of a quasi-documentary, but it’s also not “Hollywood glossy”. It often plays like fiction, but you know the old saying about the relative strangeness of truth and tale. If some liberties have been taken with the overall arc and some of the details, the basic storyline is evidently rather close to what actually happened, which makes it all the more incredible.

One of the most interesting things about Kid Cannabis is what an indicator of its era it is. Decades after Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” campaign, Nate (Jonathan Daniel Brown) and best bud (well, best human bud) Topher (Kenny Wormald) find themselves outcasts in an American and Idahoan society that disparages pot use, despite that drug’s obvious ubiquity. Nate lives at home with his single mom (Amanda Tapping, miles away from Sanctuary and Stargate Atlantis), helping her to make ends meet by delivering pizzas in his beat up sedan. Nate’s life seems to be at a dead end before he’s even out of his teens.

However, Kid Cannabis has already given away the fact that Nate is nobody’s fool, courtesy of some omnipresent voiceover by the character. Nate is self aware, funny, and remarkably intelligent. He’s also driven to get out of his current state of affairs, and when a random pizza delivery alerts him to the pleasures (and potency) of Canadian bud, he gets the bright idea of somehow transporting some of it down from “up north” and selling it around town to make a quick buck. He ropes Topher into the scheme with promises of enough quick cash for them to set up the small business they’ve always dreamed of, at which point they can simply walk away with no one the wiser and no real harm done.

The film then charts the semi-comedic course of these two wannabe millionaires attempting to figure out first how to get bud in British Columbia and (perhaps more importantly) get it back to the United States side of the border without being caught. Nate’s inherently sarcastic manner makes the boys immediate targets of Border Patrol suspicions, and one of the running gags in the film is Nate driving through the checkpoint separating the United States from Canada, with an agent addressing him as “Mr. Norman” and informing him he and his car are about to be searched (body cavities and all). Nevertheless, Nate and Topher do manage to get some skunk weed back to Idaho and turn a quick profit, at which point they decide to “go large”.

It’s at this point that the film perhaps veers from the historical record, at least based on the actual news accounts I read in researching the real life background of the film. In Kid Cannabis, Nate hits up a local Israeli émigré named Barry Lerner (Ron Perlman, doing a very authentic sounding dialect) who fronts the boys hundreds of thousands of dollars to kick the business into high gear. On the Canadian side of things, the boys have made an incredible (and perhaps too facilely achieved) connection with a grower named John Grefard (John C. McGinley) who provides them with Grade A, extremely potent bud. Seemingly overnight, Nate, Topher and a gaggle of their friends have achieved untold wealth, so much so that Nate (in another sequence which is evidently “fictionalized”, as they say) buys his Mom a luxe mansion on the banks of Lake Coeur d’Alene.

Things begin to turn dark when the previous young drug kingpin of Coeur d’Alene, a wannabe gangsta type named Brendan Butler (Aaron Yoo), doesn’t take kindly to his territory being impinged upon. Brendan hires two thugs to kill Nate and Topher, but instead they end up terrorizing another one of the crew, the aptly named Scuzz (Bryce Hodgson) and his girlfriend. Things go from bad to worse from that point on, with Brendan’s obnoxious behavior ultimately making the kid his own worst enemy. Again, the film seems to depart at least a bit from the historical record, with an intimation that Nate might be more involved with what happens to Brendan than what was reported at the time.

While Kid Cannabis is never less than engaging, it does tend to telescope events too much for its own good. This is nowhere more evident than after Nate and his crew have started to achieve success and start morphing into almost parodied versions of what “living large” is all about. According to interviews and court transcripts released after the fact, evidently Nate went a little off the deep end, especially after he started abusing cocaine. That’s little in evidence here. Aside from a couple of scenes where Nate is seen to be a bit darker than his normally cherubic self, there’s not much outright hubris on display here, despite some allusions to it courtesy of the omnipresent voiceover. Instead we’re shown a basically sweet kid whose personal American Dream just kind of went off the rails. The film might have been better served from a dramatic standpoint had Nate’s descent into his own dark night of the soul been more viscerally depicted.

Still, the basic story here is so fascinating and its overall treatment so compelling that Kid Cannabis is rather surprisingly engaging virtually all of the time. There are some great little moments throughout the film which point toward a kind of subtle social commentary on the part of writer-director John Stockwell. When Barry and Nate have their first real business meeting, it’s in Barry’s SUV in a parking lot. As the two discuss what their partnership means (with Barry going into detail about what crossing him would mean for Nate and his family), the camera suddenly drifts over the heads of these two like some errant pot smoke wafting toward the back of the vehicle. We suddenly are aware Barry’s young son is there in the backseat, simply listening as his father lists all the horrible things he can do to Nate should Nate not perform his end of the bargain. It’s a viscerally disturbing moment in an unexpectedly compelling film.

Kid Cannabis Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kid Cannabis is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This appears to be a digitally shot feature, and the native high definition source content pops quite nicely on Blu-ray. The image is typically very crisp and stable, with excellent fine detail in the many close-ups. There are a few issues, some intentional, some perhaps not so. At several key junctures, there is fake "surveillance" video and some point of view shots that look like they may have been done on something like a Go Pro. These elements are noticeably more ragged and less defined than the bulk of the film. At several key outdoor moments, contrast also seems to have been pushed to the point the lighter gradients bloom slightly, obscuring some detail and casting a kind of gauzy glow on the proceedings. Contrast is consistent and the transfer does not suffer from any egregious compression artifacts.

Kid Cannabis Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kid Cannabis's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 has some nicely immersive moments in sequences like the strip club where Nate first encounters Barry or in some raucous party scenes at the homes of both Nate and his nemesis Brendan. Though the film has only one graphically violent scene, there are several moments when gunfire rings out, and those effects have considerable force and sonic impact. The film's dialogue is always clear and easy to hear, and the entire track is well prioritized, featuring excellent fidelity and no issues of any kind.

Kid Cannabis Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:36)

Kid Cannabis Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kid Cannabis could have been a no holds barred slam dunk had it simply allowed for just a bit more character development, especially once Nate starts to drift over to the "dark side". The film is perhaps too relentlessly cheery to make it palatable to those who abhor any kind of drug use, but the basic story is incredible and intriguing enough for the film to maintain a rather unexpectedly high (no pun intended) level of interest. Technical merits on this Blu-ray are first rate, and even without much in the way of supplements (this film really could have used a featurette explaining the "true life" background), Kid Cannabis comes Recommended.