Best stoner movies to watch on 4/20 and beyond
1. Up In Smoke
Up in Smoke, in which Cheech and Chong (Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong) smoked giant blunts and even inhaled a joint full of a labrador retriever’s poop, received mixed reviews at the time of its 1978 release, but quickly became a cult classic of the stoner genre. The film chronicles the doobie-fueled duo having run-ins with the law from which they always somehow emerged unscathed. Though some of the antics haven’t aged particularly well in terms of political correctness, the movies were actually, intentionally or not, a major milestone in terms of representing the diversity of Los Angeles. They’re also full of belly-laughs that still hold up now and even inspired their own Bud Farm mobile game. Chong says a lot of the team’s creativity did, in fact, come from cannabis. “For the most part we were always high," Chong told The Guardian of working with Marin on their movies. “We always smoked a little before we went out there. That was part of the job.vIt was my job as a writer and performer to deliver the goods. So if that meant being stoned, I gladly did it. I found that the more stoned I was, the more crazy the movie was, and the more successful we were.” However, Chong also admitted that marijuana wasn’t their only drug of choice in terms of getting inspired and in the zone to work. The formula, he explained, was “a little bit of cocaine and the acid and then the weed.”
2. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
A great tale of how the munchies can change your life, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle finds the titular characters (played by John Cho and Kal Penn) on a quest for burgers and bud throughout New Jersey, while making some serious self-discoveries along the way. Aside from its stoner humor and friendship arcs, the film also explicitly confronts Asian stereotypes. As a bonus? It also features Christopher Meloni, Fred Willard, Anthony Anderson, Neil Patrick Harris, Ryan Reynolds and even a cheetah. The movie cultivated a cult following, but wasn’t initially a commercial hit. “We were hoping it would be a box-office success, and it really wasn’t,” Cho said in a 2008 interview. “So we were disappointed initially, but we hoped it would be a hit on DVD, and it was, slowly but surely. And it took a long time for it to get there, but better late than never. We always felt the movie would find its audience somehow at some point.” It did, and it found a big enough audience to spawn two sequels: Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay and A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas.
3. How High
Method Man and Redman star as Silas and Jamal in How High, in which the pair smoke marijuana that grew from the ashes of their deceased pal Ivory (Chuck Deezy). Ivory tells the pair the answers to their THC (a play on the SAT) exam, leading Silas and Jamal to ace the test and end up in Harvard. While in the Ivy League university, however, they struggle to maintain their grades—and when their supply of Ivory’s ash-fertilized weed runs out, they get desperate and exhume President John Quincy Adams in an effort to smoke his remains and get smart again. The movie features Mike Epps, Héctor Elizondo, Tracy Morgan and Judah Friedlander, among others, and its low-brow humor makes for big laughs that you don’t have to think too hard about. Though Method Man and Redman wanted to do a How High sequel, eventually one was made without their involvement starring Lil Yachty and DC Young Fly. “Long story short is that me and Meth [were] not aware that they were doing this transaction with the movie. I’m not mad at Yachty or DC Fly—like I said, it has nothing to do with them. And I’m not even upset because God always places things in the right position anyway; I’m just following the path,” he told The Grass Roots Podcast. “But my thing is when you have a brand, like Red and Meth, that kind of helped built and created this entity of How High and shooting a movie on How High—I mean, marijuana and being in college. Those were all our ideas. And when the new deal came about, we wasn’t involved in it.”
4. The Big Lebowski
Though The Big Lebowski didn’t initially do particularly well in its first theatrical release, it developed a die-hard following on home video, and to this day there are Lebowski-themed conventions around the world annually. The Coen Brothers film was carried largely by the skill and comedic timing Jeff Bridges’ “The Dude” (based on their real-life pal Jeff Dowd) as well as supporting roles from John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and John Turturro. The film focuses on The Dude, a stoner who’s wrapped up in a case of mistaken identity with touches of bowling, a severed toe and a severe distaste for The Eagles. “[When] it came out in movie theaters, it didn’t do particularly outstanding business in the theatrical market, but it did in the home video market—and then it became some sort of cult thing. How do you explain that? I have no idea,” Joel Coen told NPR. “It’s one of the more bizarre afterlives, too, of any of the things we’ve done.” He recalled, “We were at a movie theater together with our families a year or two ago in San Francisco, coming down from a movie, and we saw there was a little booth set up with Big Lebowski posters on it and a young woman sitting on the other side of this table, maybe 17 or 18 years old, and Ethan [Coen] stopped and said, ‘What is this?’ And she said [without knowing who they were], ‘Well, we show The Big Lebowski every night and people come dressed up in costumes. You should come, you’ll like it. It’s fun.’”
5. True Romance
Though True Romance is centered around Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette being on the run from the mafia, the film—the first written but not also directed by Quentin Tarantino—makes this list because of Brad Pitt in its ensemble. Pitt plays a stoner named Floyd in the movie, and he later admitted it was a bit of art imitating life. Director Tony Scottrecalled that Pitt improvised most of his lines and actually requested to be in the movie. “Brad Pitt called and said, ‘Why don’t you let me play the roommate?’ I said, ‘Are you serious? Fing yes!’ because he was on the bloom of stardom.” James Gandolfini said of the experience, “Everybody was young and nuts. Brad Pitt was around, too. I don’t think he was ‘Brad Pitt’ then, but he was great. I just had to watch him and say, ‘What a fin’ flake.’ He improvised a lot.” Pitt’s iconic improv for Floyd reportedly inspiredThe Pineapple Express.
6. The Pineapple Express
What happens when a process server and his dealer get caught up in some serious trouble? Contrary to popular belief, The Pineapple Express movie came before the marijuana strain, which actually made Seth Rogenproud. “There was NO strain of weed called #PineappleExpress when we made the movie. We said, ‘If one day, people are out there selling weed called Pineapple Express, it worked,’” Rogen tweeted for the film’s 10-year anniversary. He also revealed that he and co-writer Evan Goldberg were the official joint rollers for the movie, griping that “nobody else on the crew could roll them properly.” Rogen also revealed that the film was originally written with his and James Franco’s roles reversed. “We wrote #PineappleExpress for me to play Saul and Franco to play Dale,” he tweeted. “James wanted to switch roles, and I didn’t care that much, so we did.”
7. Friday
Ice Cube and Chris Tucker get into quite a few ridiculous pickles while trying to scrounge up $200 to pay their dealer in Friday. The 1995 film was well-received by both critics and audiences, spawning sequels Next Friday and Friday After Next, as well as Friday: The Animated Series and the ageless “Bye Felicia” meme. The N.W.A. rapper is credited as a co-writer with DJ Pooh on the film, which they conceived while getting high during a recording session. “We in the studio laughing all day, smoking weed, and we were just like, ‘Yo, we need to create something to show how the hood really is, from our vantage point,’” Cube recalled to Complex. “That’s how it started.” He said that he and Pooh took a great deal of inspiration from their own neighborhood growing up, explaining, “Everything in Friday happened on my block at one point or another. We had a little kid named Chris who would knock over the trashcans with his bike and we wanted to whoop his ass. We wanted to catch him on that bike, we never could. In the movie we finally caught him. That’s why we put that in there.” The film was director F. Gary Gray’s debut, and he was nervous about N.W.A. rapper Cube performing in a comedy. “He was like the toughest man in America, and when you take someone you’re used to delivering on hard-hitting social issues in hardcore gangster rap, and who has a hardcore point of view on politics, you would never think comedy,” he admitted. “I was excited to do my first film. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out and how people would receive Cube. This is the beginning and possibly the end of my career all in one moment.” Thankfully, it clearly worked out for all parties involved.
8. Dazed and Confused
Dazed and Confused brought us Matthew McConaughey and his catchphrase “Just keep livin’.” The ensemble cast included several actors who would also go on to become megastars, including Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Renée Zellweger, Joey Lauren Adams, Parker Posey, Anthony Rapp, Adam Goldberg, Jason London and Cole Hauser, to name a few. The film is a look at several groups of teenagers in a small Texas town in the 1970s, and writer and director Richard Linklater got small details perfectly, right down to the worship of Aerosmith and the pressures of high school football. There’s also, obviously, plenty of weed for it get on this list…and even discussions on exactly how much weed President George Washington smoked in his prime. Linklater said of the film’s depiction of teenage debauchery, “The drama is so low-key in [Dazed & Confused]. I don’t remember teenagers being that dramatic. I remember just trying to go with the flow, socialize, fit in and be cool. The stakes were really low.” He added, “To get Aerosmith tickets or not? That’s a big thing. It was really rare when the star-crossed lovers from the opposite side of the tracks and the girl gets pregnant and there’s a car crash and somebody dies. That didn’t really happen much. But riding around and trying to look for something to do with the music cranked up, now that happened a lot!”
9. Humboldt County
As far as we’re concerned, the more Fairuza Balk, the better. She stars alongside Jeremy Strong, Frances Conroy (who you may recognize from American Horror Story) and Chris Messina in Humboldt County, a dramedy that’s equal parts pot-farming, daddy issues, failure to launch and morality fable. The 2008 film also features some technology very much of its time: *69 and MapQuest are key to a major plot point and may give you either great nostalgia or cringing flashbacks of shuffling printed directions with one hand on your steering wheel. May this movie serve as a reminder that you don’t always necessarily need a plan, and that following your heart can (and often is) just as valid as using your head.
10. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
Are you a marijuana and film aficionada? Then this is the movie for you, especially if you don’t mind coarse language. Originally introduced as relatively minor characters in Kevin Smith’s Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob get a star turn once more in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, a revisiting of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. The original 2001 film sees the drug-dealing duo seeking their fair share of a Bluntman and Chronic film rights, while the reboot revisits much of the same tropes and pop culture references as the original, with the addition of a lovechild for Jay. Smith also uses cameos from a slew of other characters in his View Askewniverse, which means you’ll spot Matt Damon, Rosario Dawson, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Lee and Brian O’Halloran, as well as appearances from Val Kilmer, Chris Hemsworth, Melissa Benoist, Karrueche Tran, Craig Robinson, Joe Manganielloand James Van Der Beek…to name just a few. Smith had a heart attack while filming the reboot, and he said the entire experience was pretty miraculous, from his survival to simply getting the movie funded and distributed. “We made a Jay and Silent Bob movie where you don’t even have to be a pushover to be a little glassy-eyed once or twice in the movie. And that to me is the magic trick,” he gushed. “In fact, it’s all a magic trick! I should be dead from the heart attack. It’s a magic trick we found money to make this movie. It’s also a magic trick with the cast we got.”
11. Half Baked
Before Chappelle’s Show, Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan co-wrote Half Baked. The 1998 stoner comedy was both a critical and commercial disappointment but eventually grew a cult following. The film stars Chappelle, Jim Breuer, Harland Williams, Guillermo Díaz and Clarence Williams III as lifelong stoner pals who get into trouble with the law, as well as local drug dealers, when they get a little too high and when they grow their own potent supply. Snoop Dogg, Jon Stewart, Bob Saget, Tracy Morgan, Willie Nelson, Stephen Baldwin, Steven Wright and Tommy Chong each appear in the movie. Brennan later said the movie’s box office failure drove a wedge between him and Chappelle temporarily. “I moved [to Los Angeles] to write for Singled Out on MTV and All That on Nickelodeon, and then me and Chappelle were still always friends—we wrote Half Baked and then we sort of drifted for a second, ‘cause Half Baked sort of tanked. And then that fked my career up for years.” He added of Chappelle, “His career was f*ed up after Half Baked, I felt bad. They literally said on CNN, ‘His career is over.’ From the movie. The review said his career is over and his mom saw it.” Half Baked had several re-releases on DVD due to its success on home video, however, and Brennan and Chappelle went on to work on Chappelle’s Show together, resurrecting both of their careers to heights they likely could only have dreamed of prior.
12. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Sean Penn is usually known for playing intense dramatic roles, but his iconic turn as stoner-surfer Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High is what put him on the Hollywood map. Penn revealed in 2019 that he based Spicoli on a real person that he knew in Malibu, as well as on Cameron Crowe’s character as written. “When I read [the book and screenplay], I immediately heard somebody I knew. There was a fella who grew up in the neighborhood where I grew up…I was 9 when I first moved to the beach and I met somebody who was rhythmically aligned with that character. It was kind of extraordinary. From the time I was 9 until I was 17, I would see an awful lot of him, and I surfed, so I’d be in the water, and he just jumped off the page.” Penn had a run-in with the real-life Spicoli, but said that the real-life character didn’t realize he inspired the Oscar winner so much. “Part of that may have had to do with him not knowing where he was.” Penn recalled that he saw a well-spoken businessman with a family and kids at the beach in early 2019, and it was his inspiration for Spicoli, admitting it shocked him to see the man doing so well: “I would have never thought that anything normal was going to come from that.”
13. The Wackness
In The Wackness, Josh Peck stars as a pot dealer, Luke, who begins selling weed to help support his family in 1994 New York City. He trades marijuana in exchange for therapy from a psychiatrist, Dr. Squires, played by Sir Ben Kingsley, and falls in love with Squires’ stepdaughter, Steph. The only consistent, stable relationships Luke and Dr. Squires have are with one another, though their pal Mary Jane is always there for them, too. The film boasts a great soundtrack, as well as a heartwarming friendship and some great one-liners. Writer and director Jonathan Levine said he was inspired by Fast Times at Ridgemont High when conceiving the film, especially in choosing its setting and time period. “For me, it’s the year I graduated high school, and I wanted to do a movie about that time, and I really like high school movies that are authentic, and for me that was the best way to be authentic, rather than trying to write a movie that takes place in the present day. For me, the best high school movie is like Fast Times and what Cameron Crowe is like,” he said. “And you know, now that I’m 30 I can’t f**k with what kids are doing these days, so I just had to change it; go back to then. And I liked the music!”
14. Dude, Where’s My Car?
Sweet! Dude!Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scottlose a vehicle in a pot-fueled adventure that goes way beyond forgetting where you parked at the mall. There are forgotten tattoos, a dog that gets almost as high as the leads, and, without spoiling too much, possibly some extraterrestrial visitors. Dude, Where’s My Car? wasn’t a critical hit, but audiences got a real kick out of it, and it did well on video as well as on its frequent TV airings. Come for the stoner humor (not all of which holds up now, but most of which still works), stay for the soundtrack, Jennifer Garner and a cameo from Brent Spiner. Garner told E!that while she and co-star Marla Sokoloffwere considered supporting characters in the comedy, they drove the entire plot. “We’re the whole reason for the movie, I mean really if you go into it,” she joked. “We’re their girlfriends, it’s our anniversary and our anniversary presents are in the back of the guys’ car!”
15. Saving Grace
Want some melodrama with your marijuana? Enter Saving Grace. After Grace’s husband dies by suicide and leaves her penniless, she turns to cannabis farming to support herself. Craig Ferguson stars as Grace’s gardener, who inspires her to take up her illegal agriculture, and plenty of dramatic and comedic foibles ensue with police, paramours and poachers. Star Brenda Blethyn said some of the marijuana plants in the film were real, while others were fabricated. “Oh some of them were [genuine], sort of delivered under police escort, they had to get special dispensation from the Home Office,” she told the BBC with a chuckle. “But a lot of them, of course, were expertly made.” She added that she wouldn’t have been surprised if some of the plants went home with the cast and crew. “Probably they did, I didn’t count them,” she said. “In [one] scene, I had one of those pretend plants in my handbag, and I was showing it to people and some of them thought it was real.”
16. Soul Plane
Listen, Soul Plane isn’t the highest brow humor, but it’s the literal highest movie on this list. Kevin Hart creates his own airline after a traumatic and gross experience flying on another. and Snoop Dogg and Method Manget high in the cockpit, and a whole lot of other crude antics ensue. The film was a critical and commercial flop, but Hart explained that it actually did quite well outside of theaters, telling WTF With Marc Maronthat Soul Plane made $40 million on the street—and that fans would often ask him to autograph their bootleg videos.
17. Savages
Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are a throuple with some serious problems mixing business with pleasure on their marijuana farm, but it’s Salma Hayek who steals the show as a ruthless cartel leader. “It was amazing to work with her as a villain because we were such good buddies personally,” Lively told The Hollywood Reporter of Hayek. “It was always fun to see how talented she is, and she’s such a tiny lady, so to see her just take control and take the power, that was remarkable.”
18. Super High Me
Inspired by Super Size Me, Doug Benson embarks on a similar experiment: What happens if, instead of eating fast food for a month straight, you just smoke a bunch of weed? As it turns out, not much, but some: He gains some weight and shows a decline in his math skills, but ups both his verbal score on the SAT and his sperm count. Benson interviews activists, doctors, patients, politicians, and, of course, some friends (including Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Silverman and Bob Odenkirk) on his journey. Next, find out what happens when you smoke THC every day.
