When “High School” begins, Henry (Matt Bush) is about to graduate, a lock for valedictorian and is already dreaming of life on campus at MIT. However all that changes when he crosses paths with his friend — and former best friend — Travis (Sean Marquette), a burnout stoner. The two run into each other, literally, in the school parking lot where a severely hungover and partied-out Travis almost crashes his car into Henry’s, causing him to veer out of the way, smashing the rear-view mirror off the principal’s car. They both end up in detention that day, but afterward, decided hang out, and end up reminiscing about old times. Henry belittles Travis for his underachieving ways while Travis calls out Henry as a hypocrite for judging his lifestyle without ever having smoked pot himself. So Travis blazes one up and they both get very stoned.
Unfortunately, not only are finals for the year being held the next day, but Principal Gordon (Michael Chiklis) has organized a surprise random drug test for the entire school. Appropriately, Henry loses his shit, worried that the cannabis is still in his system, and that he will be expelled and lose his entry to MIT. Not content to use Travis’ masking measures, which only offer a 40% degree of success, the duo launch upon an even zanier scheme: they will get the entire school high, thus spoiling the results of the drug test and making school officials think something had gone wrong. The plan is to replace all the baked goods that the PTA is bringing for a baking sale — also on the same day as the finals and the drug test — with pot brownies. But how will they get enough pot to blaze the entire school? They decide to steal from the neighborhood former child prodigy turned dealer, Psycho Ed (Adrien Brody), who has a particularly potent strain of some kind of pot crystals that contain an incredible high even in small doses.
From here the film profiles their entire day as they put their plan into motion, and they certainly have a lot of balls to juggle. They have to get their pot brownies distributed, avoid the eye of the suspicious principal, take their finals and square things with the severely unhinged Psycho Ed who has found out that they have stolen his drugs. On top of that, Henry has his arch rival Sebastian (Adhir Kalyan, “Youth In Revolt”) slowly uncovering the scheme as well, in the hopes of exposing and dethroning him from the valedictorian seat. From what we’ve just described you might think the film is overstuffed, but full credit to writers Michael Susco, John Stalberg and Erik Linthorst who manage to navigate each of these plot threads easily, without losing track or momentum. But the film does suffer from a major flaw: the funniest character is barely in the movie.
The filmmakers scored a coup in getting Oscar winner Adrien Brody to once again play against type, growing out his beard, wearing cornrows and playing the hilarious, eye-twitching, absolutely bonkers Psycho Ed. Brody is on the top of his game here, with the kind of performance that earns cult status but his screen time is, to the film’s detriment, limited to about three or four sequences. His equally funny sidekicks, Paranoid (a completely unrecognizable Mykelti Williamson, best known as Bubba from “Forrest Gump”) and a nameless, unwashed hippy (Andrew Wilson) also have their parts severely reduced (Wilson apparently had about five monologues that were cut entirely from the film). Speaking at the screening, Susco revealed that the rough cut of the film ran nearly nearly three hours and a lot of subplots and characters had to be reduced and cut out in order to bring the film in at a normal running time. And it shows.
While someone like Judd Apatow can shoot reams of footage and construct a film out of it, helmer John Stalberg, making his directorial debut, isn’t as successful in honing the material down. A love story subplot is picked up and dropped off when convenient, while a potential storyline with Henry’s aggressive neighbor is only hinted at. The film’s resolution feels particularly rushed, and as we mentioned, there is simply not enough Psycho Ed. That said Susco did make it clear he wanted the focus of the film to be on the kids, and to that degree it’s successful, but it comes at the expense of what could’ve been a truly wild and eccentric stoner comedy. Instead the film plays out as a standard teen caper comedy, with a pothead twist.
While the film may not be quite as remarkable as it set out to be, in addition to Brody, it does boast some great performances. Michael Chiklis completely subverts his image on “The Shield” wearing a bad wig and playing the straight-laced and slightly perverted Principal Gordon. Marquette is particularly funny as he tries to control the slowly-spiraling-out-of-control situation, while Colin Hanks is a joy watch as his character, Brandon, a school administrator, gradually unravels after eating some of the laced brownies. But as good as the turns by these actors are, it isn’t quite enough, and while the film does offer some occasional big laughs, and a good handful of hearty chuckles, like a night after smoking a considerable amount of weed, it’s also kind of forgettable. [C+]