High jinks
Ted Whitehead
Up in Smoke (Plaza) Cheech and Chong are advertised as 'one of America's best-known and loved counterculture comedy teams', and in Up in Smoke (X), they have written themselves a freewheeling slapstick comedy poking fun at both cultures, straight and counter. If by now their material isn't either original or strange, they cover the terrain of Los Angeles rock and drug obsessions with farcical vigour and zany wit.
Cheech Mann plays Pedro, who cruises the highways in his battered heap looking for female hitchhikers and is eventually duped into giving a lift to Tommy Chong by the sight of his enormous (padded) breasts. The performers are satisfyingly contrasted as a comedy duo: Cheech, the greenhorn, Panting for new experiences and full of nervous boasts, Chong, the old hand, practical and crafty but usually too stoned to employ his hard-earned scepticism. The plot, such as it is, concerns their attempt to form a punk rock band to compete in The Rock Fight of the Century at the oxy Theatre on Sunset Strip. They try to raise some finance by collecting a van loaded with furniture from a factory in Mexico and delivering it for sale at LA's inflated prices. What they don't know is that the van and its entire contents are made of marijuana. The police do, however, and a narcotics squad led by the maniacally dedicated Stacy Keatch duly sets off in pursuit. It's an animated version of the Tom and Jerry theme. The mouse-hippy is a parasite hying off society, and the cat-cop a parasite living off him. The hippy wants to enjoy himself in every possible way, and the cop wants to stop him ditto. The hippy values individual expression above all, so that when it's suggested that the punk band adopt a uniform Chong declares: 'If we've got to wear a uniform then let everyone wear a different one.' The cops, even in Plain clothes, wear uniforms of suspiciously bulging lounge suits with regulation short haircuts. But the contest is more or less even: the hippy has the fun, and the cop has the gun. He also has motivation: 'The bigger the bust, the better the boost,' chant the narcotics officers.
There are some nice moments of farce, as When an Alsatian sleuth sniffs at the furniture van and promptly keels over, and when a. party of nuns, wrongly suspected of trafficking, are thoroughly frisked to their intense delight. The climax comes at the Roxy Theatre where a number of groups, The Berlin Brats, The Dills and The Whores give authentic punk performances. By the time our heroes appear they are so zonked-out that they are hardly capable of standing on stage; but just as the audience is starting to throw things, the marijuana van outside the theatre catches fire and the whole auditorium is steeped in a rich and potent smoke.
I don't know whether the intention is to suggest that only a thoroughly stoned audience could enjoy a punk performance but certainly you would have to be pretty high to enjoy Cheech's mad tribal dance and Chong's wild thrashing at the drums. In trying to satirise punk, Cheech and Chong have bitten off more than they can chew, and the ending is something of a let-down. Good fun overall though, if you're feeling indulgent and don't mind the sound of familiar mockery.
Previous page
