February 24, 2005 - Before he had his own show on Comedy Central, Dave Chapelle and series co-creator Neal Brennan were probably best known for their stoner comedy, Half Baked. Though it manages to recapture some of the magic of the Cheech and Chong era, the humor is somewhat strained, even by pothead standards. The film has been available on DVD before, Universal has just released a new "Fully Baked" edition that includes the widescreen version of the film and a number of extras.

The plot for this movie would be ideal for a half-hour Chapelle Show episode, but it gets stretched almost to the breaking point in an 83-minute movie. Thurgood (Dave Chapelle), Brian (Jim Breuer), Scarface (Guillermo Diaz) and Kenny (Harland Williams) are four pothead roommates living in New York City. One night Kenny goes on a munchies run and winds up feeding candy to a diabetic police horse. When the horse dies, Kenny's arrested and charged with cop killing. Now his three friends must sell pot to raise bail money for him.

The premise is basically the excuse for an hour-and-a-half long in-joke for potheads. I have to say, a lot of these jokes ring true, even if they aren't terribly funny. The opening sequence shows the four main characters as kids getting high for the first time. From that moment on, Thurgood says, marijuana became the fifth member of their crew.

If you have any experience with the subculture of reefer (and can actually remember it), you'll find that the situations and characters of the movie are very familiar. The little smoking rituals, the different ways of hooking up, dealing with dry periods -- the movie offers some small, sometimes funny insights into many of these aspects of drug culture.

But like I said, many of the jokes fall flat. It seems like the moviemakers assume the fact that smoking weed makes you thirsty or gives you the munchies is funny in itself. If you smoke enough pot, it probably is, but then so is the dancing scene in Scent of a Woman. The trouble is the film rarely rises above simple sight gags or shallow observations. There are some rare moments of hilarity here. Kenny's stay in prison is particularly good, as is Dave Chapelle's performance as rapper Sir Smokes-a-lot, but the rest of the movie just seems to be killing time between these flashes of hilarity.

One of the most redeeming features of the movie is the endless parade of cameos. Many of the guest stars portray classic figures in the pantheon of potheads: Jon Stewart is the enhancement smoker, convinced that every activity is better while high; Snoop Dogg is the scavenger, the chronic mooch; Willie Nelson plays the "back in the day" smoker who spends his time recalling how in his day a dime bag actually cost a dime; Steven Baldwin is the MacGuyver smoker able to make smoking implements out of ordinary items; Janeane Garofalo is the artist who's only creative when she smokes.

Steven Wright plays the perpetually somnolent "guy on the couch," the man who crashes at your house even though no one really knows who he belongs to. As if to gain a little credibility, the film includes a great cameo by Tommy Chong as the Squirrel Master. Kenny becomes his bitch in prison. Best of all, the movie has totally rehabilitated Bob Saget. I used to despise this man but his few lines at the rehab meeting have earned him my respect.

One big difference between this film and the '70s weed flicks it strives to emulate is that the '90s version is almost unashamedly apologetic. The only point to Chapelle's love interest in the movie is to point out how terrible drug use is. Every scene she's in offers her an opportunity to moralize about the evils of marijuana. While some may see this as even-handed, in reality it just weakens the movie's humor. Ditto for the trio's decision to sell weed as a "fundraiser" to get their buddy out of jail. It just seems that the movie can't commit itself to being what it ought to be.

Though the movie has its moments, by the end, all I really wanted to do was watch Up in Smoke.

Score: 6 out of 10