‘Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie’: Doc smokes out the history of US stoner duo

Dir: David Bushell. US. 2025. 120mins

An amiable tribute to the influential Seventies comedy duo, Cheech & Chong’s Final Film will in all probability not persuade youthful viewers to tune into their again catalogue, however followers ought to get pleasure from this nostalgic stroll down reminiscence lane. The documentary permits Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong to inform their very own story – even when the longtime companions don’t at all times agree on the main points – and people festering disputes add a welcome stress to what’s in any other case a complete however easy overview.

An amiable tribute to the influential Seventies comedy duo

Final Film opens within the US on April 25 though, consistent with the duo’s conventional stoner humour, the movie did play in choose theatres on April 20 at 4:20pm — a sly nod to hashish tradition’s affection for all issues 4/20. Cheech & Chong starred in a number of hit movies within the late Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties, together with Up In Smoke (1978) and Issues Are Robust All Over (1982), however their final function was 2013’s poorly-received Cheech & Chong’s Animated Film – and it appears unlikely this documentary will change their box-office fortunes. However for these hungry to see Marin (now 78) and Chong (86) on the large display another time, Final Film gives an apt sendoff.

Directed by David Bushell, making his feature-length debut, the documentary finds Marin and Chong driving by way of the desert, uncertain the place they’re going however hoping to satisfy up with Bushell. These segments — which are supposed to seem improvisational however clearly have been partly scripted — function a story framework for a retelling of their very own historical past. Final Film explains how Marin, a Chicano child rising up in South Central Los Angeles with an abusive cop father, got here to satisfy Chong, a half-Chinese language musician and improv actor residing in Vancouver. Forming a comedy workforce beneath the identify Cheech & Chong, they developed a well-liked stand-up act that tapped into the counterculture spirit sweeping America’s youth within the early Seventies. Hit information and a movie profession adopted – though, ultimately, duelling egos proved the duo’s undoing.

Curiously, Bushell (a producer on Sling Blade, Everlasting Sunshine Of The Spotless Thoughts and Dallas Consumers Membership) chooses to interview Marin and Chong individually, utilizing archival footage and James Blagden’s trippy animation. The technique emphasises that, regardless of being most well-known as Cheech & Chong, Marin and Chong now see themselves firmly as people. Early on in Final Film, Marin tells us about his childhood, and Chong does the identical however, as soon as the 2 burgeoning comics’ paths intertwine, so do their recollections — in addition to their differing factors of view on the arguments that led to their dissolution.

As a snapshot of the Seventies American comedy scene, Final Film suggests what was so recent in regards to the duo. Every man was a part of an ethnicity not embraced by mainstream white tradition, and so Cheech & Chong’s outsider angle meshed completely with an period of youthful rebel. The duo’s unapologetically sophomoric sex-and-drugs gags have been anarchic at a time when their adolescent viewers was resisting conformist dad and mom and the looming worry of being drafted into the ill-advised Vietnam Battle. Their model of anti-authoritarian comedy properly translated to box-office blockbusters like Up In Smoke, which tapped into the zeitgeist as potently as Nationwide Lampoon’s Animal Home.

Those that love listening to behind-the-scenes tales of artists at work will get pleasure from studying in regards to the inspiration that went into traditional Cheech & Chong bits resembling ‘Dave’ and ‘Basketball Jones.’ And the duo’s early clips, shot on lo-fi video cameras, provide charming glimpses of the duo’s goofy onstage antics and heat rapport.

In the end, the present-day framing gadget is extra of a distraction than a power. Often, Marin and Chong will likely be magically joined on their automobile experience by somebody — an ex-wife, say, or a disgruntled former affiliate — who contradicts their model of previous occasions. And Marin’s real annoyance about the truth that Chong began directing their footage cuts by way of Final Film’s in any other case genial tone. However too usually the gadget indulges cutesy, synthetic digressions that waste the viewer’s time. Higher to let Marin and Chong be their very own males somewhat, than power them to do strained comedic set items that pale compared to their previous highs.