Cheech & Chong’s Nice Dreams (1981) – DVD

Nice Dreams
**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Stacy Keach, Evelyn Guerrero
screenplay by Thomas Chong & Richard "Cheech" Marin
directed by Thomas Chong

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover To say that Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams is not a critic's picture would be putting it mildly. Its thick, aimless cloud of pot smoke clearly targets a demographic that is determined (or chemically primed) to laugh at the most formless of gags and sketchily-designed comic situations. Still, I found myself admiring Cheech and Chong's balls in crafting a film that would cause Syd Field and his devotees some serious hemorrhaging. A wafer-thin plot is contrived as the means of our pair indulging in what used to be disparagingly called "drug humour": nothing is about the completion of the narrative task except in the crudest sense of the term. Instead, the film is dogged in its recreation of nonsense talk on a night spent passing around a joint or two, where nobody reaches a conclusion and everybody laughs themselves silly.

Our men are Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, and they've just earned a massive score by selling pot out of their ice cream truck. As the picture opens, they make off with the money from a bust gone bad when the idiot cops can't start their car; they're set for life–or so it seems. And for a little while, that's it. The two follow a bunch of pretty girls into a house presided over by a mountain of a man, go back to their own apartment, and visit "Weird Jimmy" (Jimmy Fame), a wealthy source for their pot habit who's perfected a plant that "turns you into a lizard." At a restaurant, they run into recurring C&C character Donna (Evelyn Guerrero), who introduces them to a) a Blondie-ish all-girl rock band; and b) a lunatic played by Pee-Wee Herman.

A storyline does begin to take shape when Donna invites the boys over to her place for a little fun, only to be greeted by her biker ex-boyfriend who "hates Mexicans" and punches through doors. Then, for convoluted reasons, Cheech and Chong must descend into a nuthouse in order to retrieve a large sum of cash from the aforementioned lunatic. But white-knuckle tension this is not: the former leads to Cheech standing naked on top of an elevator, the latter to Cheech being locked in a padded cell, with much wandering around and arguing in the meantime. The pace is truly the thing, and Chong's uncomplicated, montage-light camerawork manages to capture the thick air and lack of purpose that goes along with the duo's drug of choice.

Is Nice Dreams a good movie? Not in the specific sense. Though Stacy Keach gets to put on his menacing Sgt. Stedanko scowl (which is the best thing about the Cheech and Chong pictures), nothing else has any overarching aesthetic sense. In any other context, its lack of craft and low ambitions would incite serious bloodlust in this particular critic. But somehow, I admired its complete lack of interest in the niceties of narrative–its lack of design is entirely by design, and it suits the milieu to which it appeals. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone interested in watching a fully-functioning movie, but I somehow harbour affection for its objective, which is simply to be the laid-back good time that a certain leafy plant is known to induce. If nothing else, it's a film that knows its audience.

THE DVD
Sony lavishes attention on what many would have considered a throwaway title with their DVD reissue of Cheech & Chong's Nice Dreams. Offered in same-side fullscreen/1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen versions, the picture looks remarkable in its vividness and fine detail. Colours are perhaps a tad oversaturated, but it's a quibble for a generally stellar presentation. (I'm unable to confirm whether the 2001 release sported the same transfer, but be aware that the two discs are identically configured.) The Dolby 2.0 mono sound is just as surprising: razor-sharp and clear as a bell, you can hardly believe it's for such a ramshackle and low-budget enterprise. No extras, not even a trailer.

91 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono), French 2.0 (Mono), Spanish 2.0 (Mono), Portuguese 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Sony