The partnership of a groundbreaking comedy duo gets the nostalgia-documentary treatment in Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie (now streaming on Paramount+). Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are ubiquitous with stoner comedy, and were the first to truly bring such bluntness to the masses in the 1970s and early ’80s via their wildly popular touring act and several hit movies. But this is a sobering doc in a couple of ways: One, it reveals that these two dudes, despite their appreciation for reefer, actually WEREN’T burnout megastoners in real life, an assumption that’s all too easy to make. And two, it features the aging icons bickering about why they split up their act in 1985, in a manner that’s a little bit staged but a little more real.
The Gist: Par for the course for showbiz documentary retrospectives that lean heavily on talking heads, vintage movie clips and archival footage, we’re privy to how relatively authentic TV talk-show interviews were decades ago. Everything these days is planned and canned, now-it’s-time-to-plug-the-new-product stuff. We frequently see Chong and Marin seated side-by-side fielding interviewer questions, and giving honest answers about the occasional tension between them, and it’s the type of thing that seems positively ancient in the current era of PR-controlled narratives. (In this case, we get a deeply tanned Geraldo Rivera with mighty feathered hair, jogging on the beach with them when he’s not firing off questions.) That tension stemmed from struggles behind the scenes of their films, several of which were directed by Chong, who insisted on being the solo “visionary” behind them. Unlike other comedy duos who channeled that tension into their art, that’s when the entity known as Cheech and Chong began to fracture. Or to use a more thematically appropriate term, burn out.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Director David Bushell takes an unusual approach to the framing of this doc, situating Chong and Marin inside a Rolls Royce with a marijuana-leaf hood ornament as they drive through the desert in search of a place called The Joint. They don’t smoke down, though. Sad trombone? Maybe a little. But they do eat some weed gummies that I suspect are your garden-variety gummy bears standing in for the potent ones you get at the local dispensary. They pretend to be high as they chat and reminisce and, eventually, argue. Occasionally, an old friend or associate hops in the backseat, most notably Lou Adler, the manager and record producer who spurred Cheech and Chong to fame, recording their hit albums and directing their first film, Up in Smoke.
The doc jumps in and out of the car as it tells the Cheech and Chong story from the upbringings of the two principals up to that 1985 split. The Mexican-American Marin grew up in Los Angeles, the son of a cop who physically abused him; he moved out, developed an interest in pottery and became an activist resisting the Vietnam War draft, which prompted him to move to Canada. Chong, the son of a Chinese father and Canadian mother, grew up poor in Calgary; a guitarist, he played with several groups, most notably backing Bobby Taylor and writing the hit track ‘Does Your Mama Know About Me.’ Both ended up settling in Vancouver, Marin joining the improv troupe Chong put together to liven up the boilerplate dancing-girl stuff in a strip club. When the troupe fell apart, they stayed together.
From there, the duo entered a battle of the bands, preparing for a show in which they’d do comedy bits in between songs played by other players. The comedy went over so well, the musicians never played a note. Emboldened, Marin and Chong moved to Los Angeles, dubbed themselves Cheech (a nickname from childhood; his real name is Richard) and Chong, and worked out their act in clubs. Their permastoned hippie-burnout characters were the most popular bit, so they honed it into the far out, maaaannn shtick we all know and love. Eventually, they were discovered by Adler, who put them in the recording studio, backed their increasingly popular live tours and signed them to a movie deal that screwed them out of piles and piles of money earned by Up in Smoke, and would’ve screwed them for six more movies after that if they didn’t hire a lawyer guy to get them out of it. And as these stories always, always go, fame and fortune and glory are fleeting and ticket sales and their partnership waned and it all ended and if you want to know what happened to them after 1985, someone’s going to have to make another documentary.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? If you want to know some of what happened after 1985, there’s the 2005 doc a/k/a Tommy Chong, which details how the U.S. government railroaded Chong, putting him in prison for nine months for selling bongs and other dopesmoking paraphernalia.
Performance Worth Watching: Besides our beloved duo and their endearingly raunchy personae, let’s give it up to the surely dozens of hair dryers that died in the service of Geraldo’s majestic coif.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: Although the high-in-the-Rolls scenario is an equally silly and funny contrived scenario, the argument Chong and Marin have inside it seems mostly real. It also isn’t particularly articulate, mostly generalities about creative control underscored with egos and jealousy (and no mention of money – the focus here is the other green stuff, maaaannnnn). That fits with the overall tone of Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie, which, despite focusing only on the first half of its subjects’ lives, gives us a timeline of events and some insights into the real men behind the brainfried dolts smoking a joint the size of a summer sausage, but not much else.
It’s an enjoyable-enough two hours though, even if analysis falls by the wayside so we can watch Cheech and Chong do a kind of Spinal Tap II as they once again pretend to be high, driving through the desert. There just aren’t enough third-party interviews here to give us context – Adler gets significant time, but we don’t get any contemporaries, relatives or journalists explaining why their brand of dizzy, lowbrow stoner yuks connected with audiences, or how their shtick inspired an entire cottage industry of weedhead comedy that perseveres to this day, like the fabled eternal bowl that never cashes out.
The argument that ensues between Chong and Marin still feels unresolved, and likely never will be, but they seem fine with it, and Chong pretty much shrugs it off as differing perspectives. Time, as ever, has a way of futzing with memory, and sanding down the edges of contentiousness. The doc doesn’t mention how Chong struggled a bit after the split, and how Marin went on to play a variety of characters (some stoned, many not) in TV and movies, nor how they’d reunite in the 2000s for a tour and other projects (including a string of unrealized movies). But it feels good that they’re still genial, maybe even loving, despite their differences, a lesson that some problems are never solved, but life still goes on and happiness is still in reach.
Our Call: Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie is slight and a little stagey, but it’s good enough, a B- of a doc that’s worth a watch. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
