Still Smokin (film)

Still Smokin is a 1983 American comedy film by Cheech and Chong.[1]

Plot
Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong play versions of themselves being invited to Amsterdam for a film festival devoted to Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton. After initially assuming that Cheech was Reynolds, the promoter soon finds out that neither Reynolds nor Parton will appear, forcing the festival to be canceled. In need of a replacement act, he goes to Cheech and Chong for help, and the duo, which has not performed live on stage in several years, happily volunteers to give a live performance.

For much of the film, they do versions of many of their recorded characters (with the exception of Pedro and the Man, whom they had already portrayed on film in Up in Smoke) and several new skits. As most of the sketches featured did not directly fit into the narrative, they are instead presented as cutaways. The final act of the movie features their live performance (filmed at the Tuschinski Theater in September 1982[2]), climaxing with a version of the "Ralph And Herbie" routine.

Cast

 * Cheech Marin as Cheech
 * Tommy Chong as Chong "Man"
 * Hans Man in 't Veld as Promoter
 * Carol van Herwijnen as Hotel Manager
 * Shireen Strooker as Assistant Manager
 * Susan Hahn as Hotel Maid
 * Arjan Ederveen as Bellboy #1
 * Kees Prins as Bellboy #2
 * Mariette Bout as Barge Waitress
 * Fabiola as Barge Lady
 * Carla van Amstel as Queen Beatrix

Reception
Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "With 'Still Smokin',' Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong are scraping the bottom of the barrel and finding only bits and pieces of the characters and comedy routines that were so successful in their earlier films."[1]Variety panned the film as an "amateurish, incompetent excuse for filmmaking."[3] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one star out of four, writing that it "barely qualifies as a movie," adding, " 'Smokin indicates Cheech and Chong' s disrespect for their own audience and makes some of their other miserable films look good by comparison."[4] Richard Harrington of The Washington Post wrote, "Richard 'Cheech' Marin and Thomas Chong are 'Still Smokin—that's even the name of their latest film venture—but the daffy fires that often lit their four previous films are in danger of extinction. Or, to put it in terms they and their friends surely will understand, it' s down to seeds and stems."[5] Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "This is the same old stuff. The humor, if you can call it such, is crass, crude, predictable, scatological, lascivious and lame."[2] Leonard Maltin's film guide gave it the lowest possible grade of BOMB called it "Rock-bottom. Not even the most forgiving C & C fans can justify this nonmovie that climaxes a scant plot involving an Amsterdam film festival with twenty minutes of laughless concert footage."[6]

The film has a score of 11% at Rotten Tomatoes based on 9 reviews.[7]