The Movie: Once upon a time, a man named Dave Chappelle and his friend Neal Brennan set out to make a stoner movie for the new generation, and Half Baked was the product. Now given that description you already know that you can probably throw out any notion of a gripping plot or high drama or amazing acting ability or anything like that. However, as a stoner flick, Half Baked is actually quite effective. I'd even maybe go so far as to say that it would even give a non-smoker a glimpse into what it feels like to get high on weed. And it certainly was obviously built to be "enhanced" by the effects of THC.

The story revolves around a group of friends... one of whom inadvertantly kills a police horse after feeding it tons and tons of candy and other sugar filled treats, not knowing that the horse was diabetic. As a result, he gets taken to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, and his friends have to come up with $1,000,000 bail to get him out before someone, well, violates him.

The rest of the film follows the hairbrained scheme the friends come up with for raising the money, along with a little bit of a love interest type story mixed in.

The visual style of this film was obviously designed to be appealing to those under the influence of psychoactive substances -- whenever we are in the world of the stoners the screen is awash with bright colors and bold patterns which stimulate the eyes and mind. In contrast, whenever they are out in the "real" world, things are drab and gray.

This film, though weak on any sort of compelling plot (as expected) does provide a good amount of laughs, and plenty of quotable lines, which is pretty much what people watch these kinds of movies for, right?

The DVD: There are two versions of this DVD, one in widescreen and the other in 4:3, so make sure you get the one you want! I, of course, am looking at the widescreen version, which has an excellent video transfer, full of eyepopping color, good shadow detail and contrast characteristics, with a fairly clean, but not TOO clean of a print (you can still see some hints of film grain that remind you that yes, this movie was shot on film).

I didn't discover until later that this DVD had a DTS audio sound track, so I actually only heard the Dolby Digital audio, which was clean, clear, functional, with a smattering of surround effects, but really nothing to write home about. I'm sure the DTS version would have had just that little extra bit of pop, though.

Special features include a number of deleted/extended scenes, as well as an alternate ending. In some ways I actually preferred the alternate ending, but perhaps it was a little bit too drug-friendly for the public? There are also some short animations and film clips revolving around marijuana culture that might or might not be entertaining depending on your level of intoxication... and oh yeah, there's a director's commentary track as well.

Overall this is not a bad DVD to get a bunch of (intoxicated) friends around the TV for a night of laughs, but obviously don't come looking for any Oscar caliber writing or performances here :)