How High

Method Man, Redman. A pair of stoners find their IQ scores jump when they are high-enough to get into Harvard. 2001/color/94 min/R/widescreen.

Grab your favorite munchies, kids. Red and Meth, that dope-addled dynamic duo, are going to Harvard! And while it's not an episode of Masterpiece Theatre, How High is destined to become a guilty pleasure of the cannabis crowd. The plot's a familiar one--take the basic selling points of any Cheech & Chong movie (a pair of shambolic protagonists who smoke lots of weed while slinging slang and driving funky, '70s-style cars), graft them onto a generic "raising hell on campus" teen movie scenario, and shake vigorously. The result is a prosaic effort that does contain some all-too-brief moments of genuine humor. Red and Meth, a.k.a. Redman and Method Man, may look like the world's oldest freshmen, but both offer genial performances, especially Method Man, who imbues the character of Silas with a dog-eared gentleness that raises him above the film's leaden script and plasticine directing. --Rebecca Levine