Movies

A stoner film (or stoner movie) is colloquial term referring to a subgenre of movies depicting the use of marijuana. Typically, such movies show marijuana use in an undemonized, comic, or even positive fashion, earning them a following as cult films. Marijuana use is one of the main themes, and inspires most of the action.

The series of movies in the 1970s starring Cheech and Chong are archetypal "stoner movies." Some anti-drug films like Reefer Madness have also become popular as "stoner movies" because their anti-drug message is seen by viewers as so over the top that the film amounts to self-parody.

Many stoner movies also have certain other elements and themes in common.

Often stoner movies revolve—at least in part—around a quest or a mission that the main characters, always well-meaning but easily distracted stoners, must embark upon. Usually these quests are altruistic or noble in nature and involve the main characters raising a large sum of money or putting their band back together for some reason.

In Half Baked, Thurgood and his friends must become drug dealers, but only to raise money to bail their wrongly convicted friend Kenny out of jail—not for personal profit. In Rolling Kansas, the protagonists embark upon a journey to find the fabled Magical Marijuana Forest, but again, only to earn enough money to save the main character’s failing business. Similarly, the plot of Dude, Where's My Car? begins with a seemingly self-centered quest to find Jesse’s car but ends in a potentially life threatening mission to save the universe from an alien weapon.

Another almost universal element of stoner movies is sex, or the lack thereof. Stoner movies are irrefutably horny ones, as reflected in the main characters. Beautiful, many times naked women are a staple of the genre. More often than not, the main characters are unsuccessful in love, and the search for it can be their quest. The well-meaning but sexually frustrated male adolescent is a common stereotypical view of the stoner. Female stoner equivalents of the sexually frustrated male stoner are rare—if not entirely absent—from the stoner genre.

These themes are loosely based upon the ideals of the stoner culture’s parent culture, the hippie movement. The origins of free love and the easy-going, warm-hearted, sometimes altruistic lifestyle are firmly rooted in Haight-Ashbury. The idea that one can personify these attitudes, face seemingly insurmountable challenges, smoke a lot of weed and still emerge victorious provided that one’s heart is true and intentions noble is perhaps the most common stoner theme.

Some stoner movies, however, do not share these common elements. Dazed and Confused, for example, focuses on an ensemble cast of characters and takes place entirely on the last day of school in a Texas suburb. This day-in-the-life movie does not involve a quest—at least in the sense described above—and is thus unique from most stoner films. Even so Dazed and Confused does contain some more common themes, such as adolescent rebellion and the oppressive nature one’s hometown can assume in those adolescent years.

List of stoner films

Yellow Submarine (1968)
Cheech and Chong (various) (1978-1985)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Dazed and Confused (1993)
The Stoned Age (1994)
Friday trilogy (1995-2002)
Bongwater (1997)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Half Baked (1998)
Homegrown (1998)
Detroit Rock City (1999)
Idle Hands (1999)
Dude, Where's My Car? (2000)
Saving Grace (2000)
How High (2001)
Killer Bud (2001)
Super Troopers (2001)
High Times "Pot Luck" (2002)
Rolling Kansas (2003)
Club Dread (2004)
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
Without a Paddle (2004)
Reefer Madness (2005)
Grandma's Boy (2006)