Lamenting the Pothead Movie

This weekend, I had the distinct pleasure of playing hostess to two MamaPop betches, Tracey and Amber. The three of us had a booze-filled slumber party on Saturday night and on Sunday night, Tracey and I hunkered down to watch Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

Being enormous fans of the original Harold & Kumar, we were giddy to see what hijinks the pair would get into, and what role NPH would play in all of it.

And, well...H&K 2 kind of blew. It definitely had its moments. While being verbally abused by their fellow inmates in Gitmo, who accuse all Americans of being lazy doughnut-eaters, Kumar defends our country's honor and shouts, "FUCK YOU! DOUGHNUTS ARE AWESOME!" And there was a completely inept official from the Department of Homeland Security who was hilarious.

But overall the whole movie was just...bizarre and nosensical. Much of what made the original H&K so brilliant, even with the outrageous incidents that our heroes encountered, were the little moments of hilarious realism. I'm thinking specificially of when Harold and Kumar first set out on their quest and walk about ten feet down the hall from their apartment when Kumar realizes that he's left his phone behind. Harold asks him if he wants to go back and get it. Kumar stares wearily at the apartment door before finally sighing, "No, we've gone too far." Brilliant.

H&K 2 had very little of that and, frankly, it made me sad since the original is a classic of that cult genre, the Pothead Movie. And it was so rambling and stupid, I had to ask a rather obvious question, which was, "Were they high when they wrote this?" If the answer to that question is yes, then these guys all need a new dealer.

Since Pothead Movies exist for the sole purpose of being fun and goofy and enjoyed mostly by a certain demographic that tends to be a little, erm, elevated, they are not held to the same standards as most mainstream cinema. These movies are not exactly Oscar contenders and since their target audience is rather specific, they aren't marketed as widely. They can freely celebrate the joys of ultimate relaxation without being accused of glorifying drug use, because...well...DUH.

But the crisis here is that the most recent Pothead Movies have just kind of sucked. Earlier this summer, I saw The Pineapple Express, which I had rather high (hehe) hopes for. It didn't seem like it could lose. Judd Apatow produced, and he can do very little wrong in my eyes, James Franco (drool) and Seth Rogen starred, along with many of the usual Apatow suspects. It had all of the ingredients to be awesome. But it just wasn't that great.

Like H&K 2, Express also had its moments, and admittedly there were more of them than in H&K 2, but it also suffered from being way too silly. Somewhere around the time James Franco's pajama-ed character, Saul, weilds a machine gun and bellows, "FUCK THE POLICE!" (which was admittedly pretty hilarious by itself), I let out a groan and wished that I had found some way to indulge in the uncredited co-star (read: weed) before the movie, and maybe that way it would have been slightly more tolerable.

I'm sure this is just a momentary slump and that before too long another classic will join the ranks of such fine pieces of cinema as Half Baked, Dazed and Confused, ironic picks like Reefer Madness, and most Apatow movies to some degree. There are also the more serious classics to consider, like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Baraka, and the Godfrey Reggio films, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi, which are all favorites among the consciousness-expanding set, but are also completely amazing cinematic achievements on their own. If you haven't seen them yet, you really should, regardless of your relationship (or lack thereof) with the herbal remedies. Also, Baraka director Ron Fricke is supposedly releasing the sequel, Samsara, next year, which means you will find me slack-jawed at whatever indie moviehouse has the good taste to screen it.

(By the way, am I forgetting any other classic Pothead Movies?)

In the meantime, consider this a call to pothead movie-makers everywhere: come on, guys. Let's like...do some good shit. Or something. As soon as we finish this ice cream.