How High (2001)

A 2001 stoner comedy about two underachieving stoners who smoke a ghost’s ashes to ace their THC exam and end up at Harvard. Method Man and Redman play Silas and Jamal, and the film is smarter than its premise by a lot. The film is less of a stoner comedy and more of a comedy that happens to have stoners in it, and the Harvard setting is the right height for the joke.

What the film does

The film begins with Silas (Method Man) and Jamal (Redman) preparing to take the THC exam, a parody of the SAT and a reference to marijuana’s active ingredient. Silas has a new strain of marijuana grown using the ashes of his recently deceased friend Ivory, and Jamal has a cigar but no weed. They team up and smoke together and discover that smoking Ivory’s ashes summons his ghost, visible only to them.

During the exam, Ivory’s ghost gives them all the answers. They score perfect results. Several colleges offer them scholarships, but none seem interesting until the Chancellor of Harvard, under pressure to increase minority enrollment, convinces them to attend.

Once at Harvard, they meet Bart, the snobbish rowing team captain; his girlfriend Lauren; their silent friend known as I Need Money; and their roommates Jeffrey and Tuan. Dean Carl Cain informs them they must maintain a minimum 2.0 GPA. Jamal joins the rowing team to compete with Bart, while Silas signs up for botany to refine his marijuana-growing skills. Both also take Black history. With Ivory’s help, they easily pass their classes.

Everything unravels after a raucous Halloween party when Gerald, a volunteer campus officer, steals and smokes the Ivory plant, cutting off their access to the ghost. Desperate to stay in school, Silas starts working on a truth serum for his botany final. He and Jamal try digging up John Quincy Adams’s remains to smoke them, which fails. They try studying but still fail most of their midterms.

Gerald, now a heavy stoner, has a vision of Ivory who persuades him to return the remaining bit of the plant to Silas and Jamal, but the supply is too small to help with grades. Jeffrey reminds Silas that success with his truth serum would guarantee his spot at Harvard. Using the last of Ivory’s leaves, Silas finally perfects the serum.

At the alumni party, the serum works. Lauren presents a discovery among Benjamin Franklin’s artifacts: a historical bong. Ivory’s ghost appears with Franklin’s ghost to confirm its authenticity. Dean Carl Cain is fired by the Chancellor. Cain returns with an axe in a failed attack and is stopped by Secret Service agents. Both Silas and Jamal are allowed to stay at Harvard. Jamie’s father (the U.S. vice president) approves of her relationship with Jamal, and Lauren leaves Bart for Silas.

Why it’s in the canon

Criteria blend is 1+3, loved it and want to remember it. The film is a stoner comedy that earns its runtime on charm. Method Man and Redman have real chemistry as Silas and Jamal , the partnership is the film, not the plot. The film does not treat its characters as jokes because they are stoners; the film treats the characters as people who happen to be stoners and lets the Harvard setting do the work of making the premise absurd.

The ghost-Ivory device is a real comedic premise that the film commits to. The fact that the ghost is smoking with them, visible only to them, and can be lost when the plant is stolen is the kind of rule-bound comedy that most stoner films skip because the stoner-logic wiring is hard to explain. The film explains it.

The film pairs with other 90s/2000s comedies that understand their characters better than their ratings suggest.

A note on the image

The hero image is the canonical Method Man and Redman still, both actors in front of a blue-lit background, the bright comedy lighting of the film. The bake pushes the source brightness down to 41.3 which is slightly above the canon’s 25-35 target but a bright comedy still is the right look for the page.

On hand

DVD only (no digital/download).