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  Directed by
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  Specs
  • Widescreen 1.78:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital Stereo
  Subtitles
  • None
  Extras

    Cheech & Chong's Next Movie

    Universal/Universal . R4 . COLOR . 90 mins . M15+ . PAL

      Feature
    Contract

    Say someone gave you money to make a movie. Say you were a pothead. Say you had to think of what to make. Would you make an historically accurate re-enactment of the Prussian War with your family and friends and real explosives? Or would you film the heartwarming story of your aunty who brought up 13 orphaned kids, seven dogs and an angry echidna, while working at the local sock factory for 40 years? Or maybe take all the good bits from James Cameron and Steven Speilberg films and call it “Jawliensnic”(it’s the story of a killer shark from outer space that comes to Earth and kills Leonardo diCaprio).

    Cheech & Chong thought long and hard about these options. Really long and very hard. Then they thought "the Prussian what?", "we have an aunty?", "Steven and James who?" and made a film about themselves instead. But don’t be put off, it’s really quite riveting stuff.

    They sleep, they wake up, they get stoned, they go out, they get their welfare, they pick up some visiting family, they get stoned, they go out, they get stoned, they get abducted by aliens and score some cosmic drugs and get stoned.

    Like I said, just a normal day. That's pretty much how I spent my university years.

    To be fair, the only way to assess the film is by the time it spends on drug related activities. In an exhausting effort (I had to lift my thumb to use the pause button), I've managed to record all drug related instances: 4:13 - 6:43 Rolling and lighting joint; 13:16 – 13:58 Smokes a cockroach; 24:17 – 25:00 Snorts salt thinking it's coke then drinks urine; 27:31 Tries to smoke cockroach again; 46:17 Get 20 pound bag full of weed; 50:39 – 52:27 Smoking joint in a brothel; 1:00:04 - 1:05:50 Getting stoned; 1:06:40 – 1:10:31 Getting stoned in a comedy club; 1:26:37 – 1:27:43 Snorts some Space Coke and freaks out.

    All up, that's about 17 minutes and 44 seconds of drug related activity. You have to admit that's not a half bad effort for a 90 minute film. Remember, that could have been spent on a plot instead. Which would you prefer?

    While you think about that, let's wander on over to the transfer section and see how the DVD polishes up…

      Video
    Contract

    Clear, detailed and filmlike are not words I’ll be using to describe this. Gritty, grainy, and dull are.

    For sure, it looks much better than the VHS copy you kept hidden from your strict God-fearing parents all those years ago (and a DVD is easier to hide than a bulky video), but it's still only an average looking picture for a DVD. Like I said, it's grainy, looks gritty and colours are okay but dullish, and fine detail is non-existent, so don’t go looking for it. There'll be no cries of "the detail was leaping off the screen" here. Besides, if you're in the right frame of mind when you watch this, you probably won't be able to see the screen through the purple haze in your room.

    That reminds me of something which occurred to me the other day: with DVD firmly entrenched now, the golden age of pirated copy 10th generation dubbed cassettes of hard to get, elusive and banned video nasties is gone. Gone are the days of gathering around the telly at a friends house and watching a blurry copy of Faces of Death, the shitty quality somehow adding to the atmosphere of watching something you shouldn't. You could never really tell whether someone just cut off their thumb or their dick, the quality was so bad, but you still felt privileged to have seen it anyway. Now, it's all high-def this, anamorphic that and DiVx the other. Personally, I'm hoping that when DVD recorders become affordable, they'll include a "Shitty Copy" function so all us idiots living blissfully in the past can make dubs that look just like a bad VHS quality copy of a copy of a copy that your uncle got from some mates at the pub.

    You still reading? Good, because to get back on track here, the other negative point to this transfer is a small one, but one that bugged me. A few frames before and after many scene changes, the picture deteriorates and suffers from macro blocking. Depending on how large you watch your image – or how close, I guess – the effect may or may not bother you. As it is, I noticed it, and then I consciously expected to see it every scene change, whether it occurred or not. It's not at every scene change that I detected, and sometimes the effect is minimal, but it does occur and occasionally will catch your eye.

      Audio
    Contract

    Next Movie has a very ordinary sounding audio effort, with a 224kbps Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix - this is about as good as Cheech & Chong could probably afford after smoking their budget.

    There has been no attempt to create a real stereo effect, with the mix sounding more mono than anything. What passes for dialogue is clear enough, and generally everything else is clear if a little harsh. A couple of times there does seem to be some fluctuation in the left/right balance for no discernable reason that could be matched to anything on-screen, but it isn't hugely distracting.

    More unusually, I found when I set my receiver to decode the stereo mix in surround mode, all the sound shifts to the rear speakers and nothing comes out of the front three channels at all. This is the first time I’ve heard this, and after checking other discs I found it has to be a problem with the disc and not my receiver. Beats the hell out of me what's going on here, so play it safe and stick to stereo decoding only. Then again, get stoned, switch to surround mode and pretend that Cheech and Chong are behind you while you watch the movie. You decide.

      Extras
    Contract

    I think they smoked the extras, because there aren’t any.

      Overall  
    Contract

    If you’re a Cheech & Chong fan, a pothead, a throwback to the eighties, a goof-off, a small dog or a juvenile delinquent, then this is your cup of bongwater. You’ll be right at home in their aimless antics and mild cacks. If you’re anyone else, I dunno, maybe have a geez at it if you have nothing better to do, but don’t say I didn’t warn you that it might not be to your taste. Movies aren’t made like this anymore and for good reason. Then again, if you think about it, the slew of crap modern Saturday Night Live-inspired films are the natural evolution of the Cheech & Chong adventure. Sure, the difference is that nowadays they try to hide the laughs under a thin veneer of plot and character development, but at the very heart of them they’re just as pointless as this excuse for a few slim guffaws and snorts.


  • LINK: http://www.dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=1768
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      And I quote...
    "If you’re a Cheech & Chong fan, a pothead, a throwback to the eighties, a goof-off, a small dog or a juvenile delinquent, then this is your cup of bongwater."
    - Vince Carrozza
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Sony DVP-525
    • Receiver:
          Sony STR-DB1070
    • Speakers:
          Wharfedale s500
    • Centre Speaker:
          Polk Audio CS245
    • Surrounds:
          Wharfedale s500
    • Subwoofer:
          DB Dynamics TITAN
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard Optical
    • Video Cables:
          standard s-video
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