Monday, October 9, 2017

Reefer Madness - The Movie Musical (2005)





Normally I'm turned off by movies about drug culture, especially comedies because I'm very likely not to "get" the jokes or references that someone who regularly partakes in those substances would. However, I do understand that there are some things that the powers that be blew way out of proportion to insure criminalization, as the original Reefer Madness movie unintentionally illustrated.

I stumbled across this musical remake quite by accident on cable television and ended up enjoying it so much that I actively hunted down the DVD. This film just has it all: catchy music, fun stereotyped characters, off-beat humor, showgirls, chocolate, zombies, big dance numbers, bloody murder, fun costumes, innocence lost, cannibalism, theft, satyrs, strange dream sequences, and Jesus Christ as a lounge singer.

The story revolves around Jimmy Harper, an all-American boy who has a cute-as-a-button sweetheart named Mary. Jimmy manages to get himself reeled in by a slimy drug pusher who invites him to a "reefer den" stocked with a cast of sleazy no-goods who pressure him into trying the demon weed. Shortly after his very first puff, good Jimmy is transformed into a drug fiend. When Mary goes looking for him, she too is dragged into the madness.

Now when I say madness, I'm not talking about what passed for insane drug-user behavior in the original film. Sure, there's a lot of giggling and some piano-pounding, but this film takes the ball and runs with it well past the goal posts. It gets pretty raunchy and bloody, so it's probably not a good movie for the the kids to watch, (despite that the alternative title to the original film was "Tell Your Children").

To sum it all up into one word, I would have to say "fun", and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who needs a good laugh and has a slightly offbeat sense of humor.

Info on IMDB: Reefer Madness The Movie Musical



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