|
diversions
Laughs fly sky
'High,' plot falls down low
By Greg Smith
On-line Forty-Niner
Sometimes you can't
expect too much from a movie or you might get incredibly disappointed.
"How High," a new comedy, starring rappers Method
Man and Redman, is such a movie.
The plot to "How High" is basically thrown together
around a dozen funny jokes and moments. It seems obvious that
director Jesse Dylan and writers Dustin Abraham and Brad Kaaya
were much more concerned with getting good laughs from the
audience than with composing a linear story or promoting any
sort of thought. This makes the movie work on the barest level
of being a fun movie.
The story revolves around Silas (Method Man) and Jamal (Redman),
two pothead slackers from New Jersey who meet while trying
to smoke weed before taking their college entrance exams.
Back it up a few months, Silas' best friend Ivory dies when
his dreadlocks catch on fire and he falls out of a building.
Earlier that day, Ivory told Silas that even if his hair caught
on fire and he fell out of a building, his spirit would always
be with him to help him along in life.
Silas, a prodigal weed grower and dealer mixes Ivory's ashes
with soil and plants a super weed in it. Back at the college
exams Silas and Jamal smoke the Ivory weed and his ghost appears,
telling the pair that one of the perks of being dead is complete
knowledge and that he will help them ace their exams.
Silas and Jamal get perfect scores on the exams and are immediately
picked up by Harvard University, mainly because they're black.
This sets off the preposterous story that includes the standard
college cliches, lots of smoking and an extremely unsettling
scene where Silas, Jamal and their white roommate dig up the
body of John Quincy Adams and try to smoke it.
The funniest performances in "How High" do not come
from Method Man and Redman but rather from some very funny
cameos. Author Spalding Gray steals the movie as an extremely
white black studies teacher. He hates white people and urges
his few black students to revolt. His one scene is the comedy
high point in the movie. Anna Maria Horsford (Friday) is also
incredibly funny as Jamal's mother.
Fred Willard (Best in Show) and Jeffery Jones (Ravenous) also
turn up as the president of Harvard and vice-president of
the United States, respectively. Willard is surprisingly funny,
given the horrible material he was given but Jones is mostly
annoying, used mainly as the punchline for president-smoking-weed
jokes.
The funniest moments of "How High" are rips on black
culture and race relations, much like "Friday" but
not nearly as funny. Method Man and Redman basically play
themselves, which is fine although Method Man was much better
playing himself in "Black and White."
One hilarious scene had Silas and Jamal getting a white student
kicked out of a lecture. The audience was laughing so hard
that it couldn't hear the last third of the scene.
What makes "How High" a fun movie is that in no
way does it take itself seriously. The filmmakers were merely
trying to get some good strong laughs and whatever came between
the laughs was beside the point.
|
|
Courtesy
of Universal Pictures
From left to right, Method Man and Redman star
as Silas and Jamal in Universal Pictures' "How High."
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Search our site
DEPARTMENT
OF
JOURNALISM
ONLINE 49ER
DEPARTMENTS
ADVERTISING
ADMINISTRATION
DAILY
49ER ALUMNI
SUBSCRIPTION
SERVICE
GIVE
FEEDBACK
|
