Directed by: Tommy Chong
Starring: Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Evelyn Guerrero, Stacy Keach, Paul Reubens, Peter Jason, Timothy Leary
The Los Guys are back in what remains their most consistently funny movie to date. I last saw it over thirty years ago, but a recent viewing reveals that the satirical slapstick holds up well. Cheech and Chong just want to do their thing and make enough money selling weed from an ice cream truck to retire, but life simply won't let them. They fall into one problem after another. Besides avoiding clueless cops, their attempts at a menage-a-trois with an old girlfriend of Cheech's winds up with Cheech hanging naked on the outside of a a high-rise elevator, Chong mistakenly signs over the duo's entire fortune to an asylum resident, and Chong is mistaken for Jerry Garcia by an obnoxious agent in a Chinese restaurant.
In another comedy, one of the above scenarios would be the plot for the entire movie. In Nice Dreams, these are self-contained issues which arise and are dealt with in hilarious fashion. Cheech and Chong's structure is that there isn't one. These two poor souls seem to invite the universe to act upon them with some of the most absurd situations imaginable. They're nice fellas, no doubt, but crazy things just happen to them which ruin all of their best-laid plans.
Most Cheech and Chong movies are laid out in the same method as Nice Dreams, but while other Cheech and Chong movies are mixed bags, Nice Dreams maintains an inspired level of humor and slapstick. Cheech and Chong stroll along in life without any clue they are the butt of an endless string of cosmic jokes. And no wonder. In between all of the get-rich-quick schemes is the quest to get high, which they haven't figured out only compounds their hassles.
Dr. Timothy Leary makes a cameo late in the film as an asylum doctor who prescribes LSD (naturally) to Cheech and Chong. Their tripping includes a Jimi Hendrix impersonator who is flanked by two little people. In another movie, this may seem excessive. In Nice Dreams, it's just icing on the cake.
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