Review: ‘Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie,’ starring Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong

April 22, 2025

by Carla Hay

A 1970s photo of Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin in “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” (Photo by Ed Caraeff/Keep Smokin’)

“Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie”

Directed by David Bushell

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” features a racially diverse group of people (Latin, Asian/multiracial, African American and white) discussing the lives and careers of former comedic duo Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong, better known as Cheech & Chong.

Culture Clash: Cheech & Chong rose to great heights in the 1970s and 1980s with their brand of “stoner comedy,” but the partnership fell apart because of conflicts over power, creative control and egos.

Culture Audience: “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” will appeal primarily to people are fans of Cheech & Chong, classic stoner comedies and documentaries about famous entertainers.

A 1970s photo of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong in “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” (Photo courtesy of Keep Smokin’)

“Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” is a very nostalgic documentary that’s partly a narrated retrospective by the former comedic duo and partly a semi-scripted road trip. The movie has some unique elements that are contrived but clever. This biographical film serves as a reminder that Cheech & Chong were groundbreaking for their time and had a comedy act that would still be considered unusual today, as interracial celebrity stand-up comedy duos are still very rare.

Directed by David Bushell, “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” is Bushell’s feature-film directorial debut. He has been a longtime movie producer, with producer film credits that include 1996’s “Sling Blade” and 2010’s “Get Him to the Greek.” Bushell is also a producer of “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie,” which had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival.

“Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” goes back and forth between two formats, with plenty of archival footage in between. One format is a traditional interview format that shows Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong talking in separate interviews in a studio setting. In these interviews, they tell their life stories, going all the way back to their respective childhoods up until the Cheech & Chong partnership first broke up in in the mid-1980s. The other format shows a more casual conversation between Marin and Chong while they are driving on a desert highway, with Marin as the driver. Along the way, certain people from their lives appear in the car’s back seat for occasional commentary.

Cheech & Chong can be considered a duo that is very much a case of “opposites attract.” Chong was born in May 24, 1938, in the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta. He was the younger of two sons born to a Chinese immigrant father and a Canadian mother with Scottish Irish ancestry. The family lived mostly in poverty, according to Chong. Born in Los Angeles on July 13, 1946, Marin was born to parents of Mexican American heritage and lived in a middle-class household.

Chong describes his upbringing as religious, but his childhood was marred by racism that he experienced for being half-Chinese. He says his mother taught him from an early age: “You’re different, so you have to be your best.” Chong, whose childhood education included Bible camp and being enrolled in the Canadian Cadets, says he dropped out of the cadet school soon after he discovered smoking marijuana and the music of Ornette Coleman at around the same time.

Marin says that his father—a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department and a World War II veteran of the U.S. Navy—was a tough and abusive parent at home. Marin remembers that from an early age, he learned to lie to his father. Marin quips, “That was my first role as an actor.” Marin says that his relationship with his father was “always contentious” and they got into physical fights. He mentions that during the last brawl that they had, Marin threatened to kill his father if his father ever attacked him again.

For much of his childhood, Marin lived in South Central Los Angeles, which has mostly black residents. Although his family was middle-class, Marin says he wasn’t shielded from violence in the neighborhood: “I saw three murders right before my eyes before I was 7,” Marin says. Marin’s family moved to suburban Granada Hills, where Marin was exposed to a more racially integrated environment. He also switched from going to public school to Catholic school. When he was a teenager, Marin says he discovered a love of pottery making and smoking marijuana around the same time.

After dropping out of cadet school, Chong moved to United States for a while, including a stint in San Francisco at the height of the counterculture era in the late 1960s. He became a musician with modest success in various R&B/pop bands, including The Shades, Johnny and the Bachelors, and Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers. Chong says, “When I discovered black culture, my life changed beautifully.” By 1965, Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers were signed to Gordy Records, which was part of Berry Gordy’s Motown Records. Chong also had a co-songwriting credit on Diana Ross & the Supremes’ song “Does Your Mama Know About Me,” which was on the group’s 1968 album “Love Child.”

The road to Marin and Chong meeting each other began after Marin dropped out of college and moved to Canada to avoid being drafted in the Vietnam War. For a while, Marin worked as a ski instructor in Vancouver, as he bided his time to figure out what he really wanted to do with his life. By sheer coincidence, Marin says that when he was recovering from a broken leg from a skiing accident in Vancouver, he was staying at a friend’s house, and the only album in the house was “Love Child,” which he played repeatedly. Marin had a vague idea that he might be a comedic writer and/or performer, but at the time, he didn’t have enough connections to get started in showbiz. Marin says he was also influenced by left-wing political ideas and greatly admired writer/activist David Harris, who “influenced me the most.”

By 1969, Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers had broken up. Chong had soured on the music business and had moved to Vancouver. Chong says he became enamored with stand-up comedy and performance art, especially after he had seen an avant-garde performing arts group called The Committee. Chong (who admits that he copied a lot of ideas from The Committee) formed his own unconventional comedy improv group, which is how he met Marin, who was recommended to Chong. Marin started as a writer for the group and eventually became a performer.

The improv group fell apart, so it wasn’t long before Marin and Chong decided to perform as a duo. Marin got the nickname Cheech because when he was a baby, an uncle said he looks like a little chicharrón, a fried pork rind that is a well-known snack in Mexican culture. Cheech & Chong’s comedy act had the duo portraying themselves or various characters, with many of the jokes about drug use, especially marijuana, as a reflection of the druggie lifestyles that Chong and Marin had in real life.

And the rest is history: Cheech & Chong became a popular comedy act based on their “stoner” personas. Cheech & Chong had sold-out live shows, hit albums and major studio movies written by Marin and Chong, who both relocated from Vancouver to Los Angeles during this period of success. Cheech & Chong won their first and only Grammy Award for their 1973 album “Los Cochinos” (which mean “The Pigs” in Spanish), their third comedy album. Cheech & Chong’s first movie—1978’s “Up in Smoke”—was an immediate hit (it grossed $104 million on a $2 million production budget) and is still considered Cheech & Chong’s best scripted movie.

Lou Adler had signed Cheech & Chong to his company Ode Records, produced Cheech & Chong’s comedy albums, and directed “Up in Smoke,” a movie that Adler independently financed and sold to Paramount Pictures. Cheech & Chong learned a harsh lesson in showbiz when they found out that the contract they signed with Adler only gave Cheech & Chong 10% of the grosses from Cheech & Chong album sales and tickets for “Up in Smoke,” while Adler got about 90% of the grosses. Cheech & Chong had to tour in order to make most of their income.

Determined to have more creative control and more money for their movie work, Chong directed four of the five subsequent “Cheech & Chong” movies, which had diminishing returns in commercial success and critical acclaim. (The other Cheech & Chong movies are 1980’s “Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie,” 1981’s “Nice Dreams,” 1982’s “Things Are Tough All Over,” 1983’s “Still Smokin’,” and 1984’s “Cheech & Chong’s The Corsican Brothers.”) Chong and Marin also parted ways with Adler as their manager and replaced Adler with Howard Brown, who is described in the documentary as a sleazy New York wannabe gangster type. Chong and Marin both say in the documentary that Chong liked Brown a lot more than Marin did.

In the documentary’s car commentary, Marin and Chong have mostly comedic conversations. When they bicker and disagree, it’s about what went wrong in their partnership. Marin says that Chong didn’t give Marin enough credit for Marin’s ideas when they made movies together. Chong says that Marin didn’t give enough respect to Chong’s role as director of the movies.

They both agree that a breaking point came when Chong refused to be in Marin’s 1985 music video for “Born in East L.A.,” a parody of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Born in the U.S.A.” Chong (who sometimes refers to himself in the third person) said he didn’t want to be in the music video because he thought having a small role in the video would be beneath him. “Born in East L.A.” (the song) was a hit. Marin later starred, wrote, and directed a critically panned 1987 comedy movie flop of the same name.

Adler is one of the people who shows up in the documentary car’s back seat. He mostly just sits back and watches Chong and Marin talk but he occasional chimes in with obviously scripted jokes. So do Chong’s first wife Maxine Morrow, formerly known as Maxine Sneed (whom he was married to from 1960 to 1970), and his current wife Shelby Chong, whom he’s been married to since 1975. “Things Are Tough All Over” director Tom Avildsen appears in the back seat very briefly to look like an awkward bystander during one of the Cheech & Chong arguments about creative control of their movies.

The documentary has the expected archival footage that shows mostly clips from Cheech & Chong’s movies, stand-up comedy shows and TV appearances. There’s a clip of an interview that Cheech & Chong did at the Playboy Mansion in the mansion’s famous grotto area, where two topless women dive and swim in the background. TV journalist Geraldo Rivera was a big fan of Cheech & Chong and is seen in several of the archival interview segments shown in the documentary.

In the interviews filmed for the documentary, Tommy Chong is more forthcoming about his personal life than Marin is. Marin married Natasha Rubin, his third and current wife, in 2009. Marin has been divorcd twice, and the only marriage he briefly mentions in the documentary his first wife Darlene Morley, whom he was married to from 1975 to 1984.

Tommy Chong says that for a period of time from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, he was juggling simultaneous relationships and children with Maxine and Shelby. He says that he began his love affair with Shelby in 1967, and they took LSD on their first date. Tommy Chong comments on the love triangle by saying Maxine was “cool about it” for a while.

Maxine then suddenly appears in the back seat and says, “I wouldn’t say I was cool about it, but I had two kids, and I loved him.” Their two daughters are Rae Dawn Chong (who became a famous actress in the 1980s) and Robbi Chong, who is one of this documentary’s producers. Cheech & Chong’s children are not interviewed for the movie.

Even though the bickering in the documentary shows some of the bitterness that led to the duo’s split, “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” ends on “good vibes” tone. Marin admits that in the early years of the partnership, he learned a lot from Tommy Chong, but he compares their breakup to a student outgrowing a teacher and needing to move on to other things. During the end credits, there’s a compilation of clips showing some highlights of what Marin and Tommy Chong did after they parted ways in the mid-1980s. Cheech & Chong have had sporadic reunions since their mid-1980s breakup. This documentary is a worthy tribute to Cheech & Chong’s history and their legacy.

Keep Smokin’ will release “Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie” in U.S. cinemas on April 25, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on April 20, 2025.

Review: ‘Color Out of Space,’ starring Nicolas Cage

January 23, 2020

by Carla Hay

Nicolas Cage in “Color Out of Space” (Photo courtesy of RLJE Films)

“Color Out of Space”

Directed by Richard Stanley

Culture Representation: The movie’s characters are predominately white (with one African American, one Chinese Canadian and one Native American) who live in the fictional rural town of Arkham, Massachusetts. 

Culture Clash: After a meteorite crashes on a family farm and strange things start to happen, the movie’s characters have conflicting degrees of skepticism and beliefs over what is logical science and what is the unexplainable supernatural. 

Culture Audience: “Color Out of Space” will appeal the most to fans of campy B-movies in the sci-fi and horror genres.

“Color Out of Space” (Photo courtesy of RLJE Films)

Sometime in the 2010s, Oscar winner Nicolas Cage stopped being an A-list actor and started doing a steady stream of low-budget films (many of them released direct-to-video), where he usually plays a character who’s somewhere on the crazy spectrum. Cage has been very open in media interviews that his financial problems (wild spending, lawsuits over non-payment and IRS liens) have forced him to sell off many of his prized possessions. Apparently, this downsizing also extends to the budget and quality of movie jobs he’s been taking.

But somewhere along the way, Cage decided to have fun with these C-list movies by going into high-gear campiness in these roles. (His 2018 revenge flick “Mandy” already has a cult following.) Even though Cage tends to make films in the genres of action, drama and horror, make no mistake: His gleefully unhinged performances are now bringing a lot of comedy to his films.

In “Color Out of Space” (which is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Colour Out of Space), Cage plays Nathan Gardner, the patriarch of a five-person clan living on a farm in the fictional rural town of Arkham, Massachusetts. The family, who used to live in a big city, includes Nathan’s wife Theresa (played by Joely Richardson), a recent survivor of breast cancer; teenage daughter Liviana (played by Madeleine Arthur), who fancies herself to be a Wiccan-inspired witch; teenage son Benny (played by Brendan Meyer), a rebellious stoner; and pre-teen son Jack (played by Julian Hillard), a near-perfect child who gets along with everyone.

In the film’s opening scene in a secluded wooden area, Liviana is wearing an outfit that looks like she’s on the way to a Renaissance Faire (cape and all), as she calls out to the spirits of earth, air, water, fire and ether to help heal her mother from cancer. She’s even got a white horse, which might be part of her attempt to look like some kind of fairy mystical princess. This is director Richard Stanley’s not-so-subtle way of telling the audience that Liviana represents someone who believes in the supernatural.

While she’s in this secluded spot, in walks Ward Phillips (played by Elliot Knight), who introduces himself as a hydrologist who’s surveying the water in the area. Ward seems to be kind of amused by Liviana’s outfit and her spiritual ritual, and he makes it clear that he’s a scientist who doesn’t believe in any of that witchy mumbo jumbo. Okay, we get it. Ward and Liviana are opposites.

Back at the farm, Liviana and Benny engage in some verbal sparring and name-calling (something they do several times in the movie) before the family settles in for the night. Their night is massively interrupted when a magenta glow takes over the atmosphere, and there’s a loud boom that feels like an explosion. Running outside, the family sees that a magenta meteorite surrounded by smoke has crashed into the front yard.

Ward and local law enforcement Sheriff Pierce (played by Josh C. Waller), who’s apparently the only cop on duty in this remote area, investigate the meteorite and don’t know what to make of it. Ward, who touches the meteor with his bare hands (not a very safe or scientific thing to do), advises the Gardners not to drink the water from their well until they can figure out what’s going on. Near the meteorite, there’s also a horrible odor that Nathan describes as smelling like a dog has been lit on fire.

Speaking of animals, Nathan is very proud to own several alpacas on the farm. He mentions the alpacas so much in the movie that it’s almost as if the screenwriters (director Stanley and Scarlett Amaris) deliberately made all these references to alpacas so people could make a drinking game out of it. It isn’t long before everyone on the farm (yes, including the alpacas) start to act strangely.

When the meteor first hit, Jack was temporarily in a catatonic state, but then he snapped out of it. Theresa also has a trance-like blackout while she’s cutting carrots in the kitchen. And let’s just say that the carrots aren’t the only things that get sliced. Then just as suddenly as the meteorite appeared, it disappeared from the yard. But the strange occurrences continue, such as weird voices amid static on the phone. And then Jack suddenly acts like he can hear voices that no one else can hear.

And what is famous stoner comedian Tommy Chong doing in this movie? Playing a hippie stoner named Ezra, a recluse who claims that he can find out what’s going on with all of these unexplained and frightening incidents. Ward spends some time at Ezra’s place to hear out his wild theories, but the mystery continues.

There are some glaring plot holes in this movie that are bigger than the crater left by the meteorite. Ward doesn’t do what a real scientist would docontact his scientist colleagues to get their opinions. He’s the only science-based investigator in the entire movie. And even though the strange sightings make the local TV news (where a reporter openly mocks Nathan in an interview and makes Nathan look like a UFO-sighting nutjob), the publicity doesn’t bring out any curiosity seekers (including scientists) to the farm to take a look for themselves. But hey, this is a low-budget movie with a small cast. Don’t judge too harshly, because this movie doesn’t take itself too seriously.

It becomes apparent that the meteorite brought some non-human, unexpected and unwanted visitors to the area. And things get worse, as some members of the Gardner family develop a gruesome skin condition that leaves them writhing in pain. And one member of the family might or might not descend into madness. (Take a wild guess who it is. )

All of the actors in the film except for Cage are playing it straight in this deliberately bizarre horror flick. Cage’s wild, over-the-top mannerisms invite people to laugh along at the silliness of it all. (There were plenty of laughs at the screening that I attended, and they were all because of how Cage was acting on screen.) The visual effects are standard for this type of low-budget film, except for the last 15 minutes when there is some truly stunning imagery that’s more than a nod to psychedelia.

Crazy Cage, Crazy Chong and crazy, bloody chaos. What more could you want in a horror film? Oh, that’s right. Don’t forget the alpacas.

RLJE Films will release “Color Out of Space” in select U.S. cinemas and on VOD on January 24, 2020.

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