Half Baked is a 1998 stoner comedy film directed by Tamra Davis and starring Dave Chappelle, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Neal Brennan. It was Chappelle’s first leading role in a film and Davis’s first comedy since she directed Billy Madison in 1996. Half Baked is considered a classic in the drug-comedy oeuvre and helped Chappelle obtain his own show on Comedy Central some years later.
Chappelle plays Half Baked‘s hero Thurgood Jenkins, a janitor at a pharmaceutical lab. Thrugood smokes a great deal of marijuana on his off-time with friends, which he obtains through his job. One such friend, Kenny, is jailed for accidentally killing a diabetic horse with sugar, and Thurgood must help the rest of his group raise $100,000 to pay for Kenny’s bail. Not having any legitimate business options, the team agrees to sell Thurgood’s weed to get the money. Their operation (called “Mr. Nice Guy”) attracts an immense number of customers, but ruins Thurgood’s relationship with his girlfriend Mary Jane, who is against drugs and dumps him upon finding out his plans. To make matters worse, Thurgood and his friends also make enemies with local drug lord Samson Simpson, who threatens to kill everyone involved unless he is paid $20,000 per week. Thurgood must find a way to keep himself alive, get Kenny out of jail, and maybe–just maybe–win back his girlfriend in the process.
Half Baked received poor reviews upon its release in January 1998. The L.A. Weekly said of the film that “its deadly lows outweigh its infrequent highs.” However, Half Baked acquired a cult following when released on VHS, partially due to its sheer number of celebrity cameos, including Jon Stewart, Snoop Dogg, and Willie Nelson. It bolstered Chappelle’s career as a comedian, and he and co-writer Brennan went on to create Chappelle’s Show for Comedy Central in 2003.
Cast
Dave Chappelle
Guillermo Diaz
Jim Breuer
Harland Williams
Rachel True
Clarence Williams III
Pictures
Videos
Featured image via dailydoobie.com