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Quint checks out the stoner comedy HIGH School at Sundance 2010! Whut?
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here bright eyed and bushy tailed after 5 hours of sleep (an embarrassment of riches for Sundance) with my thoughts on the stoner comedy HIGH School that premiered at the fest last night.
The highest compliment I can pay this movie is it feels like an ‘80s comedy, populated by an ensemble telling a simple story with a ton of likable characters. And there is a lot of weed. A lot. Of weed.
The midnight premiere audience went nuts for the movie and cheered at the copious amounts of illegal substances, but the feeling I got was they were also drawn in by a movie that puts its focus on pure entertainment. At least I was.
The movie is just plain old fun, thanks mostly to the very smart casting choices from director John Stalberg. Nobody plays their usual role here… Michael Chiklis is more like Milton from OFFICE SPACE than Vic Mackey as the uptight school principal, Colin Hanks is his slightly less uptight, but still square assistant principal, Adrien Brody is a tweaked out drug dealer with full body tattoos and cornrows that answers to the name Psycho Ed and Matt Bush is the straight man, not the ball-punching friend type like his character in ADVENTURELAND.
Adrien Brody steals this film from some really funny motherfuckers. Psycho Ed will be quoted by geeks and jocks alike in schools and colleges across the country if this film can break through even just a little bit. Already Sundancers are calling out "Whut?" back and forth to each other on the shuttle buses.
Like most great stoner/high school comedies the premise is simple and the complications come from the crazy characters either fucking up or staying one step ahead of the square baddies. In this film Matt Bush plays a high school senior an inch away from being valedictorian. He’s a shoe-in, but his childhood buddy (Sean Marquette) is now a big doper and talks him into taking a drag on a joint and the very next day the school’s principal institutes mandatory drug tests, promising expulsion to anyone who doesn’t pass.
So Bush’s choices are simple. Either he finds a way to beat the test or he has to find a way to make everybody fail.
You’d think finding someone else’s piss or something would be the easy choice, but instead the two geniuses decide it’d be easier steal some raw THC crystals from the crazy twitchy drug dealer, bake a shit ton of brownies and swap them out with the bake sale goodies at school the day of the drug tests.
But it’s much funnier to do it the complicated way and watch the two leads try to keep their heads above water as the entire school around them gets higher and higher with each brownie they eat… all while a crazy pissed off Adrien Brody hunts them down.
Marquette and Bush work very well together and show a lot of promise as comedic actors, but I gotta say this movie really does belong to the supporting cast. Chiklis, Brody, Colin Hanks and Booger himself, Curtis Armstrong, all take the movie from being a passable stoner comedy to a genuinely funny and entertaining movie.
Oh, and Yeardly Smith (Lisa Simpson!) is in it, which rocks.
I fully expect this one to be picked up… I just hope it doesn’t go the same tortured route as ASSASSINATION OF A HIGH SCHOOL PRESIDENT, another really funny Sundance high school comedy that I saw in 2008 that ended up disappearing before being dumped to video.
Stalberg said at the Q&A that he thought about doing a college city tour with the movie as well. Whatever develops distribution-wise we’ll be sure to let you know.
Hope to get one more review pumped out tonight before crashing so my body will let me wake up for my early morning screening of The Extra Man. As always, you can follow me on Twitter to get my as-it-happens thoughts and updates while on my Sundance adventure!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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just drop it, yell first and get out...like you do with your boyfriends.
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I thought this movie was fucking hilarious and Adrian Brody was classic. Can't wait to see it again. Also, I never recognized that as Chiklis the whole damn movie!
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it's cool man i hate first posters too. I was just being an ass is all. For my own self amusment. Say no more.
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Not a bad thing. Think his miscasting in King Kong turned a lot of people off him. People are already calling "miscast!" on him playin a marine on Predators, but I bet he will surprise us. If you look at real life marines, most of them look like average joes, doesn't mean they're not badass
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'Cuz, like, "high" is in the title. Meh.
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Dude, Brody looks like he belongs in AMERICAN HISTORY X! He looks like a total fucking badass.
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I am There.
Also, that squinty picture of Brody in the article actually made me lol. Thanks for that. -
The way Quint describes psycho Adrien Brody (who sounds hilarious) and how he'll be quoted by jocks and stoners for years to come sounds just like his description of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "Hesher".
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Summer of Sam. Glad to see he's branching out from the angsty leading man shtick he's been doing for a few years (not that I don't think it works in movies like Brothers Bloom). I've gotta see Predators first to see if he hasn't maybe branched out TOO far.
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SOLD!
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... of the type that can pull you right out of a film. There is no way in hell that the valedictorian kid would pop positive on a urinalysis. The test is only good for detecting habitual smokers with relatively high levels of residual THC. One drag the day before would never show up. Typical Hollywood mistake of the kind that ruins movies.
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... if the leads don't KNOW that about piss tests... *sigh*...
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'Cause in the age of www everything there is no excuse for them NOT knowing...
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'Cause in the age of www everything, there is no excuse for them NOT knowing...
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Is that... funny? Really? Man, they really should make weed legal cause stoner's are the EASIEST people to sell to and entertain. Chronic stoners love EVERYTHING they're sold. It's kind of amazing to me that a broken down, dying capitalist empire like the US doesn't realize this and legalize it immediately. You're talking making HUGE amounts of money. And imagine the tax revenue? Legalization would solve the budget deficit literally overnight. Boy, American lawmakers sure are stupid.
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Priceless!
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I don't understand our country's stupid attitude about pot when it is probably less dangerous than alcohol. Also the possession of small quantities of pot is for all purposes legal in many parts of the country, so let's legalize the sale and distribution of pot and TAX THE SHIT OUT OF IT.
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...start acting in every film made? It's like he's the new Christopher Walken.
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This movie was awful. Not original in the least, not to mention terribly unfunny.
Worse though: The Extra Man.
Holy shit that was boring. -
oh, I get it.
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