Nice Dreams (1981)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I have seen this 20 times and it still makes me laugh. This was the first time they actually had a plot and its good.

"Nice Dreams" is the third Cheech and Chong film and it has the same formula as their other films:1. Two stoners live a nearly pointless life.2. The comedy is juvenile, best suited to teenage boys.And that's about it. The plot of this film is boring. It feels more like a string of bad jokes. I happen to like Cheech and Chong, but this film is uninspired. Much of it feels like there is no script. Paul Reubens--who can be hilarious--even comes across as boring in this film.The film also contains some insensitive moments, for example the comedy that centers on cocaine use and the scene about the woman who falls asleep just before having sex with Cheech.

This is the only Cheech & Chong comedy I've seen so far, so I can't judge it against their other works, but if you took out the drug references and the brief nudity and replaced them with a few fight scenes, I'd put it on the level of a lesser Bud Spencer & Terence Hill comedy (like for example "All The Way, Boys!"): amiable enough, but one laugh per half an hour is not exactly a good enough average to justify a rental, is it? This movie is too raunchy for kids, too obvious for adults, too scriptless for anyone. There is an interesting surreal, hallucinogenic sequence that is too short, and a role for Pee-Wee Herman that is short but still too long. Cheech himself sums it all up when he says "Ha Ha! That's very funny, man. It's so funny I forgot to laugh". (**)

Well I guess everyone should have at least one "head" movie in their collection. I liked it on VHS, not sure if I would shell out the bucks for a DVD edition, unless it had some deleted scenes or outtakes, which I am not sure are available. Stacy Keach pretty much lowered his standards to appear in this movie and yet he was perfect for the role of the drug unit commander. There were some classic scenes: Cheech lying on a ladder acting like he was swimming; a drug interdiction helicopter hovering a nude beach; a tortilla starting a fire right in front of an unsuspecting blind musician friend. These are all sight gags, but with a "pot" movie, what else do you expect? "Gone With The Wind"? Most of the movie is more stupid than funny, but at the time they were hilarious. The best scenes in the movie involve a restaurant haunted by "night" people. The only part of the movie I didn't care for was the ending, which was rather abrupt. All in all, a good escape to the 60s and 70s.