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It’s a notable achievement, accomplished in an environment hardly worthy of the effort.

Half Baked is like most “stoner” films, which assume that their audience is so notoriously uncritical that little to no effort is necessary. There are lots of stoner jokes, a flying dog...there’s a boob...and some very predictable prison rape jokes. There’s also a lazy deus ex machina at the climax of the film. There’s even a love subplot which exists for no other reason than to satisfy the Federal law that apparently requires one in every comedy, whether it adds anything to the story or not. In a sense, it’s the perfect movie for anyone who wants to get baked and spend an hour and a half laughing at the kind of self-serving humor you can only appreciate WHEN you’re baked.

You could accomplish the same thing by smoking a bowl and staring at a saltwater aquarium for 82 minutes. But keeping an aquarium pretty enough to appreciate when you’re high takes a lot of work. Watching Half Baked doesn’t require you to leave the couch - or even remove your off-hand from that bag of Cheetos. On the upside, there are some amusing cameos; the most interesting part of the film has a little fun with stoner stereotypes. This leads to appearances by well-known weed advocates like Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg, comedy stalwarts like Janeane Garofalo and Stephen Wright, as well as some cool “before they were famous” moments from Tracy Morgan and Jon Stewart.

On the one hand, expecting more than a minimal level of quality from a movie made mostly for drug addicts is probably stupid on my part. Then again, how hard is it to make a movie like this just a little bit better than it was? We’re not talking about liberating France or putting men on the moon; we’re talking about punching up a mediocre script so that you don’t have to develop a crippling reefer habit to appreciate it. But when you can make a profit (and this movie did) without really trying, why would you ever, EVER make an effort again? Oh my God...it’s almost like people who make movies are often indistinguishable from drug addicts!

I think I’m going to go eat a plate of brownies and stare at some fish while I contemplate my increasingly meaningless place in the universe.

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