Critics often lambast the films for their amateurish production values and reliance on drug humor. But that roughness is the point. These are movies made by outsiders for outsiders. They reject Hollywood gloss just as their characters reject corporate culture. The final image of Up in Smoke , where the duo accidentally incinerate a police station while blissfully playing air guitar, is the perfect metaphor: they don’t seek to overthrow the system; they simply want to get so high that the system fades away in a puff of smoke.
To understand the Cheech and Chong film oeuvre, one must situate it within the context of the 1970s. The optimism of the 1960s had curdled following the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and economic stagnation. The American public was cynical, and the "counterculture" had moved from a revolutionary movement to a commodified aesthetic. cheese and chong film
The pairing suggests a racial and class harmony rarely seen in cinema. In Up in Smoke , the duo creates a "family of choice." The film posits that the only way for a Chicano from East LA and a WASP from a wealthy suburb to truly bond is outside the confines of straight society. Their shared intoxication levels the playing field, dissolving the barriers of race and class that structured 1970s America. Critics often lambast the films for their amateurish
