Cheech & Chong and I just don't see eye to eye. Seeing as Up in Smoke was my first exposure to them back when I was a youth that subsequently led to me buying (and enjoying) their comedy albums on LP it's unfortunate that a melancholy feeling washes over me every time I decide to revisit one of their forays into feature films. Granted, films based around drug culture and getting high have only so many jokes you can tap into before the well runs dry but the duo of Richard "Cheech" Marin and Thomas Chong must have been too baked themselves to realize that their humour sinkhole was parched by the time the credits rolled on Next Movie.

As the third outing for the stoner partners, Nice Dreams is much of the same bringing back the slacker personas they'd perfected over the years with more of the nonsensical songs (this time there's one about saving the whales) they've peppered into past efforts and the same sense of plotless craziness as Next Movie - but even more so here which is hard to believe since they were abducted by aliens in that one! Stacy Keach also reprises his role as Sgt. Stendanko from Up in Smoke but doesn't make for a perfect foil to our anti-heroes like he did there instead being stuck in various unfunny scenes where he's too busy smoking drugs in his office to bother going after our law-breaking pair.

Given how unimportant a cohesive story seems to have been, Nice Dreams basically plays out like a bunch of sketch set pieces stitched together like some marijuana fueled Frankenstein monster. The basic idea that Cheech and his equally unmotivated roommate Chong are selling weed from the back of an ice cream truck just leads to moments where they're trying to hide a grow-op from an investigating helicopter, Cheech gets stuck naked on a glass elevator at a swanky hotel, and a painful to watch sequence set at a Chinese restaurant that contains an appearance by Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens - and all this occurs before the flick collapses into a cacophony of randomness during the final third.

I understand that going into a Cheech and Chong movie you're really not supposed to give things much thought and that's quite obvious by the lazy, laid-back vibe the entire running time of Nice Dreams delivered and (perhaps) if I'd of partaken of the duo's drug of choice before watching this I might have enjoyed it more but I'm more apt to compare this to the munchies stoners get after smoking one or two joints: empty calories. It's an attitude they'd continue to farm with the follow-up Still Smokin' before almost phasing out the drug humour and going for period piece parody with their version of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel The Corsican Brothers (and if you've seen the results of that it's not hard to see why they broke up not long afterwards).

You can't really judge the performances of either Cheech or Chong since they're basically going through the motions but what's really upsetting about the cast is the fact that Keach is so utterly wasted as Stedanko. I'm not sure what they did to lure him back but when he was so memorable in Up in Smoke it's disappointing to see the character being so irrelevant. And, speaking of pointless, I have to mention the various cameos. As mentioned above, Reubens is on hand and not nearly as fun to watch as he was in Next Movie, which could be due to him playing his Pee-Wee persona in that flick. Big-mouth comedienne Sandra Bernhard shows up, as does Timothy Leary. Cheech and Chong's respective wives Rikki and Shelby also get brief cameos and those eagle-eyed amongst us might also be able to pick out future Scream Queen Linnea Quigley who is billed as "Blondie Group # 2" in the credits.

All these years after they hit it big with the slacker movement that birthed itself from late 60s Hippies, it's difficult to watch most of Cheech & Chong's big-screen efforts. They're just too random and filled with dated humour to really be that enjoyable to watch. At one time, back in my early twenties when I was going through my marijuana phase, you couldn't go wrong tossing on one of their flicks but when it comes to "pot comedies" (as I'll call them) there's movies like Half-Baked and Pineapple Express that have come along and made it unnecessary to bother with any of their films except Up in Smoke - so watch either that or those two more modern takes on stoners rather than waste your time with this. (Chris Hartley, 1/10/11)

Directed By: Thomas Chong.
Written By: Thomas Chong, Richard Marin.

Starring: Richard Marin, Thomas Chong, Stacy Keach, Evelyn Guerrero.