Half Baked

When it comes to people smoking pot in real life, I have to admit I'm categorically against it. Lots of folks like to think it's harmless, but I'll bet they haven't sat behind smokers at a concert while trying to take notes for a future review (by the time the act is done performing, all you end up with is a grocery list.) But on screen, however, my own experiences have been decidedly more stimulating and Dave Chappelle's Half Baked (along with Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused is one of the movies that almost make marijuana manageable.

Chappelle's day-glo homage to Cheech and Chong not only revived stoner movies but, as the recently-released special edition DVD demonstrates, it augured the arrival of a major Tinseltown talent. Chappelle's wit is always razor sharp, whether he's sending up superstar celebs or getting blunted in a basement with his pothead pals.

Half Baked, of course, was not Chappelle's first onscreen cause celebre. He was one of the very few funny things about Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights and he memorably antagonized Matthew Modine as a music video director in Tom DiCillo's The Real Blonde ("that's not your ass," he told Modine, "that's your back with a line in it").

But the film was his first major effort and his comic sensibility -- which reigns supreme every week on Comedy Central -- appears fully intact on film, a significant feat given his relative newcomer status at the time. From his cartoonish reactions to the magic weed he gets from a scientist to his inspired improvisations as a wannabe Jamaican druglord, Chappelle is the star of the show.

In addition to director Tamra Davis' accessible (if decidedly un-technical) commentary, the disc includes an alternate ending (Chappelle's Thurgood leaps off the Brooklyn Bridge), deleted scenes (more insider descriptions of buying and selling weed, alternate takes, and some extra footage featuring Bob Saget), some flash animation describing various smokers, "Granny's Guide to Bakin' " (a comical sequence where a septuagenarian gets progressively more plastered as she bakes up some homemade recipes), and "Five Minutes with `The Guy on the Couch' " which I'm adamantly convinced is not performed by Steven Wright.

All the features are probably best watched when blunted, which is why neither "The Guy" nor "Granny" sustained my interest. At the same time, the movie itself holds up far better than anyone could have predicted. The jokes sustain the threadbare plot and the performances are convincing enough to make one believe these guys are really high, despite Davis' assertion that no real smoking took place.

If nothing else, Half Baked proves that, even at an early stage in his career, Dave Chappelle had some terrific, fully-formed ideas. In fact, watch it as a prelude to his show and you'll see the seeds (no pun intended) of some of his most memorable characters. -- Todd Gilchrist