HALF BAKED

In HALF BAKED, four boys experience pot smoking together, and years later, we find them as young men in New York working dead end jobs. The highlight of their existence is “getting high” together until one of them, Kenny (Harland Williams), gets arrested for feeding junk food to a police horse. This rallies the others to steal marijuana from a science lab to sell in order to raise money to get their friend out of jail. This is a silly drug comedy in the tradition of the CHEECH & CHONG movies. It is un-redemptive, unfunny and poorly acted movie. It is a definite pass.

This movie is aptly named HALF BAKED because nothing about it is well cooked. These boys never really grow up. They smoke pot an early age. Eleven years later, they are still smoking pot, except now in New York. Thurgood (Chappelle), Scarface (Guillermo Diaz), Brian (Jim Breuer), and Kenny (Harland Williams) lose motivation for everything else except smoking pot until Kenny lands in jail. This causes the others to steal and then sell illegal substances to raise the funds to bail their friend out.

The plot is a series of dumb jokes. Kenny runs to the store to buy pot-smoking munchies and feeds popcorn and chocolate to a police horse who drops dead because he is a diabetic. Kenny is then branded as a cop killer. Though played for laughs, this is unfunny material. Then, Kenny lives in prison in fear of rape, having other inmates fight over him. His childhood friends are determined to save Kenny from this fate worse than death. Thurgood works at a pharmaceutical lab as a janitor and steals the high grade marijuana there which is being used in a government study. The men then kick into high gear and do the most ambitious thing of their lives: start a business selling pot with business cards and other office supplies. They initially give out free samples which brings them lots of business, but also rightly offends the mayor of the town. This brings the boys into a confrontation with the mayor which eventually brings them to the attention of the law, causing the movie thankfully to end.

In light of the attacks against the tobacco company and the health-oriented lifestyles promoted today, this is a surprising movie, geared only for those who find the subject of pot smoking hilariously funny. The problem with this, however, is that not only are there a limited number of pot smokers, but to gain all their attendance and attention, the humor is written on a level that even the most brain-dead can understand. This movie is not only not clever, it is not funny, falls flat and continues to get worse during its running time. HALF BAKED is wet toast.