10 Best Stoner Movies of All Time
By Vu Pham on Apr 18, 2022
1. Dazed and Confused (1993)
Texas small-town teens in the summer of 1976, breaking free in muscle cars on the last day of school. Richard Linklater gets the Seventies details right – including how these kids spend practically every minute blazing to Aerosmith and Foghat, arguing about aliens, sex and how much weed George Washington smoked.
2. The Big Lebowski (1998)
How does the Dude abide? “Oh, the usual. I bowl. I drive around. The occasional acid flashback.” You definitely don’t have to be baked to fall under the spell of this Pynchon-times-Marx Brothers classic, but Jeff Bridges turns the Dude into the ultimate hippie hero, a hairy, bathrobe-clad American legend. It’s good knowing he’s out there, still hating the Eagles and still blasting his Creedence tapes.
3. EASY RIDER (1969)
Easy Rider is a 1969 American independent road drama film written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda, and directed by Hopper. Fonda and Hopper play two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South, carrying the proceeds from a cocaine deal.
4. HOW HIGH (2001)
Method Man and Redman go to Harvard (“How did I fail Women’s Studies? I love bitches!”) after discovering a new kind of chronic that turns them into geniuses. Their secret: using the ashes of their dead friend to fertilize their weed crop.
5. Friday’ (1995)
One day in the life of Ice Cube and Chris Tucker, chilling on a South Central porch with a head full of smoke. Tucker is one dealer who doesn’t mind getting high on his own supply. But remember: You don’t want to smoke up Big Worm’s stash, because playing with his money is like playing with his emotions.
6. Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie’ (1980)
It’s hard to turn a stoner comedy into a franchise – those require a little too much follow-through. But Cheech & Chong pulled it off with the immortal trilogy of Up in Smoke, Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie and Nice Dreams. And like the Godfather and Star Wars trilogies, this one peaks with Chapter Two – with some help from Pee-wee Herman. “Man, if you had a second brain,” says Cheech, “it would die of loneliness, man.”
7. Billy Madison (1995)
Adam Sandler is at his simple-minded best playing Billy, an aimless, developmentally stunted 27-year-old rich kid who has to pass elementary, junior high, and high school in order to keep control of his dad’s business from his smarmy nemesis. Big man in a little seat—HA! Hey, simple is good, especially after five bong rips.
8. TED (2012)
Seth MacFarlane, director of Family Guy, creates the ultimate unrealistic stoner film featuring a profane, bong hitting teddy bear “Ted.” Best friend John Bennett, played by Mark Wahlberg is continually dragged down by his derelict bear, which pisses off his girlfriend Lori Collins, played by Mila Kunis. The interchange between the two Bostonian-accented characters is offensively hysterical.
9. A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)
What’s the cleverest way for Harold & Kumar franchise creators, and screenwriters, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg to marry weed with Yuletide cheer? By having Santa Claus bless the fellas with a blunt the size of a Shake Weight, of course. It’s that kind of sophomoric wit that makes A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas the best stoner comedy in years, in addition to the most ridiculously hilarious uses of 3D technology this side of Piranha 3D.
10. This is the End (2013)
This is the End is a flick about a bunch of baked, self-righteous actors who play “themselves.” The end of the world plot includes Craig Robinson singing “take your panties off” alongside Rihanna, Kevin Hart kicking Aziz Azari down a fiery pit of death, and a disturbing yet comical exorcism of Jonah Hill.
