Up in Smoke (1978)

I haven't smoked in about twelve years. And I'm pretty certain that's the main reason I'm sitting here giving Up in Smoke two and a half stars instead of the four I'd probably have handed it back in the day. There's a lesson in there somewhere about how context shapes the way we experience art, or maybe just about the fact that weed makes mediocre jokes funnier. Probably both.

Here's the thing: Cheech and Chong weren't really making a film. Not in any traditional sense. What they were making was a delivery mechanism, a vessel for a particular kind of loose, rambling, gag-forward energy that exists somewhere between sketch comedy and stand-up, dressed up in a barely-there plot and given a running time. And if you meet it on those terms, if you're already tuned to that frequency, it genuinely works. The van made of marijuana is a genuinely inspired piece of absurdist comedy. There's a rebellious, carefree spirit running through the whole thing that's hard not to warm to, even sober. It knows exactly what it is and it commits, which counts for something.

But commitment only carries you so far. The jokes are, let's be honest, almost entirely one-note. The acting is loose to the point where "loose" starts to feel like a generous word for it. And the sketch comedy pacing, which might feel freewheeling and spontaneous at two in the morning with red eyes, starts to feel repetitive and a bit shapeless in the cold light of sobriety. The riffs keep coming, but they're all playing the same chord. After a while you start noticing the gaps between the laughs.

It's a product of a very specific time and a very specific scene, and that cuts both ways. If you were deep in that culture, if this was the film that got passed around alongside everything else, it's practically sacred text. I get that. I've been in rooms where this film felt like the funniest thing ever committed to celluloid. But those rooms had a certain atmospheric quality that my living room in 2024 lacks. What felt hilarious then feels flat and repetitive now, not bad exactly, because it's harmless and silly and has its moments, but not exactly something that holds up when you're watching it straight and sober and slightly tired on a weeknight.

Some films age because their ideas age. Up in Smoke ages because its chemistry ages. The chemistry between Cheech and Chong is the whole film, and when it crackles, you feel it. When it doesn't, there's not much else there to fall back on. No plot worth speaking of. No real visual ambition. Just two guys riffing, and the extent to which that works depends almost entirely on whether you're riffing along with them.

I wasn't. Not this time. And I don't think I'd be doing anyone any favours by pretending otherwise.

Two and a half stars. More of a vibe than a film, but occasionally, sometimes, that's enough.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 1978  | Watched: 2025-09-04

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Related on Movies With Macca

More with Cheech Marin: Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)