Universal 1440 Entertainment has positioned itself as the go-to studio when it comes to recapturing lost audiences from stoner across funny III comedies. In the past few years, this video-on-demand unit of NBCUniversal has produced How High 2 (2019) – its sequel literally 18 years after the first installment and is set to launch Half Baked: Totally High (2024) this year roughly 24 years after the original was released. 1440 is little more than a chrysalis for Universal’s IP scavengers who develop quick and dirty DTV spin-offs and prequels of virtually any popular titles such as American Pie and Bring It On as well as long-forgotten flops that include Bulletproof (1996) and R.I.P.D. (2013). They also made an awful “remake” of The River Wild in 2023 with Taran Kilian (nominated for an SNL). I picture their greenlight process as getting stoned and watching a mix of clips from old MTV Music Awards and then greenlighting the funniest one they see. I encourage other production houses to adopt such an approach.
Half Baked and How High are two films whose time period would fit perfectly with any teenage boys’ room in the 2000s. This was the peak era of DVDs and teenage boys equipped themselves with greasy playstations and a lot of Combos. Both films earned subpar earnings at the box office, however in turning into cult films through home video distribution, these films found their fans among stoners, misfits, and stoner-misfits who found the films’ coarse satire appealing wit’s (e.g. using ganja for propelling one’s self above the Manhattan skyline or using one’s dead friend’s remains to pass on his spirit and scrape through all the college entry exams). Uh, Half Baked even featured depictions of stoner Thurgood, with a staccato of a pre-jacked Dave Chappelle as the berated security guard, and How High boasted the perniciously endearing faces of Method Man and Redman clearly reveling in bullying the hell out of Harvard University. [Editorial note: How High is also credited as the first film for Jesse Dylan, the son of Bob Dylan and also the last movie that Spalding Gray appeared as an understated and caricatured black history professor.]
Because of economic limitations, Universal 1440 cannot afford to cast any of these lead actors again, so the sequels have their work cut out as to how original the originals were.
Half Baked: Totally High is a completely standalone offering that introduces Thurgood’s son JR (played by Dexter Darden) who has already been raised by his mother Mary Jane (played by Rachel True who reprises her role) after she left her husband David. From the original cast members, Chappelle’s friends Jim Breur and Guillermo Diaz, along with the unique mumbling Harland Williams also make a brief appearance. However, Harland does only appear as a weed loving gym instructor within the story. Some characters are almost completely not connected to the previous film called How High and instead the writers have created entirely original characters who reside within the same timeline as the first film. Lil Yachty and the crossover celebrity DC Young Fly are in charge of playing Roger and Calvin, who lived in Roger’s basement and were broke losers. However, they find a weed bible that somehow grows amazing weed. Another star in How High 2 is Mike Epps, who was cast as Baby Powder, playing a pimp who appears in a hallucination and constantly slaps the boys, guiding them on how to create large amounts of weed. The brief appearance of Al Shearer can be seen in the form of a silent man called “I Got Money” that is an improvement to his character from the previous film where he played, DJ I Am Broke. In other small roles, T.J. Thyne plays a hilarious but obnoxious role of a security guard who continues to ruin the fun for many.
Both tomes use the picaresque shaggy dog journey template set by Cheech & Chong’s famed pot comedy Up in Smoke (1978). Half Baked: Totally High features JR and his friends Myles who is a rideshare driver and a fraud of a stand up comedian and Corey whose selling her Wargasm sex toy line via her social media platforms attempting to make a road trip from California to Passaic, NJ to perform the last rites for their dead friend Bruce. Bruce dies after smoking the holy trinity of weed which is a combination of indica, sativa and a newly discovered strain called biblica. Of course, they begin marketing Biblica. In How High 2, Roger and Calvin have their stash or weed scripture stolen from them. Therefore, they have to go on a quest across Atlanta to retrieve it, starting from their scary other high school, buzzer-controlled Russian mafia’s strip bar and a shady pharmaceuticals firm featuring Mary Lynn Rajskub impersonating Elizabeth Holmes.
The stoner defeats the World by dirction, they stop and go back to their pointless digression. It’s like they are trying to get back the plot line of a movie they started narrating. Things get rather more complicated with Half Baked when a more interesting character called “The Guy On the Couch” appears. This character is portrayed by the ever so dull Steven Wright, who has nothing to do but hover in the background zoned out like a ghost. In a particularly low point in How High, where Dean Cain, who fans of lois and clark will understand is the rush of old age, threatens to expel method man and redman. In this situation, they remember the corpse of John Quincy Adams and get the bright idea to smoke him so that his ghost can come alive and help them cheat. It is a very sad story and does not really make any sense. These two broke into the graves of met three Hpresidents and attempted to put the head of one of the presidents in a blender in order to recall presidental appeals and more than that it did not make any sense. It is true that the movie then goes directly to the next crazy thing and you are never quite sure what to expect next from this picture. This is undeinably a stoner comedy bronze really. This has some elements from the Looney Tunes cartoon which really is truely one of a kind.
Did you know how High 2 channels that spirit when smoke begins pouring out of Calvin’s breasts after he tests Rajskub’s “safe” A drug called “Fye”, which has driven test subjects to insanity during hidden clinical studies. It takes an electric performance from DC Young Fly and an uncanny control of his body during these bits of heightened physical comedy but strives to make them quite that. In Half Baked: Totally High, the scheming white businessman of the dirty establishment who has a legal connection in a weed dispensary and bulldozes everyone else out is played by a leering David Koechner. The weed film, at least as far as entertained by Universe 1444 goes, has become detached to the corporatization that came in the wake of legalization and seeks to portray this rope-carrying inexpensive dope seller as a cowboy from the pre civiliser fictional neighborhood.
Koechner is not the mustachioed final boss in Half Baked: Totally High, but there are still a few more corporate/criminal ladders to climb to reach that level. Shadow (Justin Miles) possesses rancid halitosis while playing a drug kingpin and appears to be the Biblica’s source, but JR learns the hard way that he is not so tough. The greatest drama is presented by one of JR’s regular clients, Frankie Muniz, who grows addicted to the Biblica and turns Totally High into a torture-horror comedy that is completely out of left field.
And for no-budget sequels that come twenty years after the original, unpredictable is all I can desire. In How High 2, that is the goofy antics of DC Young Fly as if he just stepped out from the cartoons, and in Half Baked: Totally High it’s the oddly shaped and stupendous! Crazy madness of its last act which starts from the earth and ends up in another universe. I’d love to try whatever Universal 1440 is if it causes them to create amazing shows.
How High 2 (Unrated) is available on Amazon Prime Video: It has been reported that Half Baked: this week Totally High was uploaded in silence on Tubi, where you can watch it in its entirety and free of charge.
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