High School

The cinematic highways are littered with stoner comedies that even the most stoned person in the audience wouldn’t find funny. This is not one of those films; in fact, it’s just the opposite – a smart stoner comedy. The film stars Matt Bush as Henry Burke, an ace student about to leave high school behind and go to MIT on a full scholarship. One day he hangs out a little too long with the school’s biggest burnout, Travis (played by John Belushi style with by Sean Marquette), and succumbs to peer pressure to get high. The next day, Henry finds out the school principal (a hilarious Michael Chiklis) has instituted a school-wide drug testing program, and Henry knows a failed test could lead to his scholarship being taken back. So Harry and Travis come up with a plan to save the day by getting the entire school stoned on pot brownies. After all, if everybody fails the drug test then nobody can get in trouble, right? It’s a nice twist on the plot to most pot comedies, and the actors all deliver the kind of funny, off kilter performances a film like this need to be more than just another Cheech and Chong rip-off.