‘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 most likely not persuade youthful viewers to tune into their again catalogue, however followers ought to take pleasure in 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 all the time agree on the small print – and people festering disputes add a welcome rigidity to what’s in any other case a complete however simple 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 Powerful All Over (1982), however their final characteristic 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 screen yet another time, Final Film offers 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 staff beneath the identify Cheech & Chong, they developed a preferred 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.

Apparently, Bushell (a producer on Sling Blade, Everlasting Sunshine Of The Spotless Thoughts and Dallas Patrons 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 contemporary concerning the duo. Every man was a part of an ethnicity not embraced by mainstream white tradition, and so Cheech & Chong’s outsider perspective meshed completely with an period of youthful revolt. The duo’s unapologetically sophomoric sex-and-drugs gags have been anarchic at a time when their adolescent viewers was resisting conformist mother and father and the looming concern 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 take pleasure in studying concerning the inspiration that went into traditional Cheech & Chong bits corresponding to ‘Dave’ and ‘Basketball Jones.’ And the duo’s early clips, shot on lo-fi video cameras, supply charming glimpses of the duo’s goofy onstage antics and heat rapport.

In the end, the present-day framing machine is extra of a distraction than a energy. 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 typically the machine indulges cutesy, synthetic digressions that waste the viewer’s time. Higher to let Marin and Chong be their very own males relatively, than pressure them to do strained comedic set items that pale compared to their previous highs.