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What movies work best with chemical assistance?
With the release of Pineapple Express tomorrow, list-makers everywhere are ordering their rankings of the best stoner movies. I’d like to put a spin on the question, however:
What movies can be fully appreciated only if you’ve been drunk or high at least once in your life?
I have some difficulty answering this question myself, because you could count on one hand the number of times I’ve had alcohol (two of those were accidental), and yes, I have inhaled - but only secondhand marijuana smoke.
So maybe that’s why when I saw Dazed and Confused, it just didn’t resonate with me. Since what little social life I had didn’t involve any kind of drugs, I found that movie extremely slow and boring. I still can’t help but wonder what Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman was smoking when he put it on his 10 best list - ABOVE Schindler’s List. Um …. no.
Many of you might say 2001, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. That’s on my top 10 of all time, and I put it there without a little help from my friends - although I think you could make an argument that you have to be high to fully appreciate Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - the movie.
So - what are your chemically imbalanced picks?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Ask the Audience
Comments
By Sir Critic
August 6, 2008 3:41 PM | Link to this
I’m sure “Yellow Submarine” works on a whole other plane when illicit substances are involved, but that’s another movie that works just fine without them. I discovered it when I was … 5, at the then-Victory theater. That was the occasion that got my two great interests in gear: the Beatles and movies.By SRCputt
August 6, 2008 3:19 PM | Link to this
Maybe chemical assistance is what is needed to find Mike Myers funny?By Steve
August 6, 2008 12:19 PM | Link to this
Akira. Caution: May cause your brain to actually explode.By derwood
August 6, 2008 3:31 AM | Link to this
How about Labyrinth, with David Bowie. Since you mention Sgt. Peppers, don’t forget Yellow Submarine.By Allie D.
August 5, 2008 12:28 PM | Link to this
This one too is a hard one for me to answer, not because I don’t partake in libations and such (although I do not smoke pot), but because I don’t watch a lot of movies while inebriated. But I can go off of what some of my friends have suggested. Cliche stuff like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and The Wizard of Oz to the soundtrack of Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. lol. I would imagine that being stoned out of my gourd on morphine might have helped me to enjoy most of Michael Bay’s movies, though I tried to watch one of his movies while on Vicodin after a surgery and I found myself more appalled the one movie of his I actually used to think was somewhat decent, The Rock. In fact, I think being in an altered state tends to make me a more critical film viewer. And by critical I mean “less likely to appreciate the bigger picture and more likely to nitpick on minor details.” In other words, the most annoying film viewer on the planet.