Our series on the best stoner movies ever made (that you can stream right now) settles the argument on the best of Cheech and Chong
What’s the best Cheech and Chong movie? Their first one, Up in Smoke (1978), is like a perfectly timed fart at the end of Hollywood’s most experimental decade, proudly classless and trashy. But that movie also bears the authorial stamp of record producer/director Lou Adler as much as it does that of Cheech and Chong themselves—especially once it reaches its conclusion, a blatant advertisement for the pair’s Adler-produced albums and live concerts.
Meanwhile films three-through-six in the Cheech and Chong canon, those being Nice Dreams (1981), Things are Tough All Over (1982), Still Smokin’ (1983), and The Corsican Brothers (1986), provide diminishing comic returns alongside their diminishing onscreen marijuana use—byproducts of the boys growing apart, grasping for more salable personas, and losing their spark in the process.
But Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie (1980), their second feature and the first of four to be directed by Chong himself, is in the context of this particular Goldilocks scenario the one that’s just right. It moves the stoner pair through screen-space—and outer space—with even more of an experimental 70s Hollywood vibe than their actual 70s Hollywood movie did. Shot through with master-shot long takes on deceptively elaborate locations and sets, director Chong hilariously underplay the onscreen pair’s gags with the help of some overly hazy photography and muddy sound design. Intricately detailed yet quite easily watched outta the corner of your eye while rolling something up, Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie is the one they should be remembered for.
But with that said, perhaps we shouldn’t make a final judgment yet—Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie (2025) opened in US theaters just last month, and will surely be reviewed in another volume of Streaming for Stoners, coming soon to a TJM email blast near you.
Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie is up for rent on most VOD services.
