Monday, June 30, 2014
The Reefer / Moviegoing / Film When Cheech and Chong made for good company on the national holiday
Posted By Ben Sachs on 06.30.14 at 03:00 PM
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One rarely discusses Cheech and Chong movies in terms of visual art, but Charles Correll's cinematography on Nice Dreams really did look gorgeous in that new print. The film had a warm, sunbaked look that I never recognized before, since I'd only seen it on VHS. The perfectly legible grain and the long-take dialogue scenes, whose consistent lack of camera movement suggest they were created under a stoned stupor, seemed practically Warholian. The film's slack pacing was like honey dripping off a spoon.
After the invigorating anti-Reagan outrage of They Live, the lackadaisical dropout humor of Nice Dreams made for a pleasant unwinding—if not a fine way to inaugurate the holiday. What could be more American than counterculture? After all, countless individuals immigrated to this country to escape the dominant culture of wherever they were from. "You can be yourself in America. That is America," underground filmmaker Usama Alshaibi said to me in April. When he did, I realized those words could summarize any number of classics about all-American eccentrics and losers: You Can't Take It With You, Two-Lane Blacktop, The Bad News Bears, and Handle With Care are four titles that come to mind. Nice Dreams doesn't belong on that list, but I wouldn't mind if Doc Films (or some other enterprising rep programmers) were to screen it after any of those.
Ben Sachs writes about moviegoing every Monday.
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