The place you stand on Half-Baked in all probability depends upon the place you stand on two different issues: Dave Chappelle’s comedy stylings and stoner comedies usually. When you’re a fan of each, then Half-Baked is or ought to be a rippin’ traditional; When you’re lukewarm on both, then you definitely’re in all probability tempted to jot down off the film as ridiculous, underproduced and stuffed with infantile gags.
This can be a disgrace as a result of in case you write it off, you are lacking out on one of the vital fascinating and subtly essential comedies of the Nineteen Nineties.
Chappelle (who additionally co-wrote the movie) stars as Thurgood Jenkins, one in all 4 pals in New York Metropolis who, to place it bluntly, smoke lots of weed. Thurgood works as a janitor at a pharmaceutical firm that is researching the medicinal results of marijuana, and the motion begins when he and his three buddies smoke a number of the firm’s specifically engineered stuff. One among them, Kenny (Harland Williams), then goes out to get some snacks and unintentionally kills a diabetic police horse by feeding it junk meals.
He will get thrown in jail, leaving it as much as Thurgood, Brian (Jim Breuer) and Scarface (Guillermo Diaz) to boost sufficient cash to get him out. Within the traditional stoner-movie custom, they give you a horrible plan: steal a bunch of weed from Thurgood’s pharmaceutical firm and promote it everywhere in the streets of New York Metropolis, the place it was, on the time, nonetheless unlawful.
This creates zany confrontations with a variety of various characters, from Thurgood’s new girlfriend (Rachel True), whom he is lied to about his love of the inexperienced stuff to a well-known rapper named Sir Smoke-a-Lot (additionally performed by Chappelle) to a drug lord (Clarence Williams III). Many stoned hijinks ensue, and in the long run, every thing seems OK, with Thurgood even giving up smoking dope for his girlfriend as a result of irrespective of how a lot he loves the ganja, he loves ladies extra.
Over time, the movie has predictably gone on to grow to be one thing of a cult traditional, And this is not simply because it has an enchantment to a sure set of late-night inebriated viewers or due to its celebrated cameos by everybody from Jon Stewart and Stephen Baldwin to Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson.
Each the writing and the comedic set items are persistently robust from high to backside, as a result of collaboration of Chappell and co-writer Neal Brennan, who would go on to co-create and co-write Chappelle’s Present within the early 2000s. In some ways, the movie looks like a dry run for that present, which might propel Chappelle to superstardom: It has the identical edgy humorousness and regularly pushes its bits in fully sudden instructions.
However regardless of its enchantment, Half-Baked – which premiered in theaters on Jan. 16, 1998 – almost sank Chappelle’s profession. Earlier than the movie, the comic was seen as on the rise in Hollywood. He had appeared in all the massive stand-up comedy spots on TV, from Def Comedy Jam to The Late Present With David Letterman, and was starting to land minor roles on the massive display, in tasks like Eddie Murphy’s The Nutty Professor and Con Air. So he obtained along with Brennan and wrote a characteristic script and requested his buddy Breuer to costar.
Watch the ‘Half-Baked’ Trailer
On its launch, the movie made cash in theaters – $17.5 million on a funds of $8 million, which appears excessive, given the low manufacturing values – but it surely was savagely panned by critics, who’ve by no means met a stoner comedy they do not like to hate. In an interview with the Your Mother’s Home podcast, Brennan remembered considering the film was the top of Chappelle in Hollywood: “They actually stated on CNN, ‘His profession is over.'”
Chappelle’s father had died at about the identical time, and the stress from that, together with the reception of Half-Baked, drove the comic to consider quitting the business altogether. He purchased a farm in Ohio, and, as he advised James Lipton on an episode of Contained in the Actor’s Studio, recalled considering that he “was performed with present enterprise.”
Ultimately, Chappelle’s profession would get well, after which some. A number of years later, he would reunite with Brennan to create Chappelle’s Present, which might grow to be a sensation. And he has at all times tended to jot down off Half-Baked, telling Lipton in the identical interview that he did not love being remembered for it and that “the script was approach higher than the film.”
However the movie deserves higher than to be remembered as a one-off misfire. Seen now, what’s placing – past the diploma that it appears to be extra in keeping with Chappelle’s later success than to run opposite to it – is how influential it’s. Goofy motion pictures about closely stoned characters return to Cheech & Chong’s work within the ’70s, and the historical past of inebriated characters doing humorous issues onscreen extends again to the early days of Hollywood; Charlie Chaplin performed that gag many occasions and in addition to anybody ever has.
However what Half-Baked helped introduce was an overt admittance that common folks had been smoking pot and doing it loads. When Thurgood and his buddies go on their promoting spree, they encounter all types of individuals, together with teenage children and their dad and mom, well-known music stars and extra. The insinuation is that irrespective of how many individuals would possibly need to restrict it, marijuana use is right here to remain. Inside a decade of its launch, as marijuana started to be made authorized on the state stage, the movie’s prediction grew to become actual.
On high of this, the film mixes a slacker tempo with a visible absurdity that anticipated, and influenced, an enormous swath of the comedy movies of the next a long time. Dude, The place’s My Automotive? (2000), Harold & Kumar Go to White Fort (2004), Knocked Up (2007), Pineapple Specific (2008) and a legion of lesser-well-remembered movies of their ilk are all immediately indebted to Half-Baked, and it helped encourage a particular second of comedic absurdism that pervades movies like Anchorman (2004), 21 Leap Road (2012) and The Lego Film (2014).
So whereas Half-Baked is often remembered as a type of stoned facet observe to Chappelle’s profession, it is in all probability higher seen as a turning-point film, signaling the arrival of recent traits in each comedy and the tradition at giant. And it is not a foul late-night joint both.
