How High
Directed by Jesse Dylan
- comedy
The story
Jamal and Silas, two ordinary guys who smoke something magical, pass their college entrance exams with flying colors and end up at Harvard. Ivy League ways are strange but Silas and Jamal take it in a stride -- until their supply of supernatural smoke runs dry. That's when they have to start living by their wits and rely on their natural resources to make the grade.
What it’s like
Bright, flat, daytime comedy light: sunny campus quads, dorm rooms lit by cheap fluorescents and the glow of a TV, a washed-out early-2000s palette of beige hallways and faded hoodies. The camera stays mostly conventional and unfussy, with plenty of medium two-shots of the leads riffing in close quarters and a few sped-up or smoke-hazed dream sequences that let the image go soft and psychedelic. The soundtrack leans on hip-hop beats and punchy, cheeky score cues that keep the energy bouncing. The vibe is loose, goofy and deliberately smoky, the kind of comfort-food stoner comedy you put on with friends on a lazy weekend or late at night when you want to laugh without thinking. Pacing is brisk and gag-driven, with the emotional register staying light: two slacker friends stumble through academic pressure, learn to lean on each other and their own quick wits, and the arc is warm rather than heavy. Intensity is low: crude humor, drug use played for laughs, some sexual innuendo and mild profanity, with no real violence or dread. It suits fans of broad, raunchy stoner comedies who want easy, friendly laughs and a feel-good underdog story.
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