After the horror that was 300: Rise of an Empire AKA Stereotypes Are Us,  I wanted something light and fun and mirth-filled for my Sunday Night Movie. I almost wenmt with GalaxyQuest, a terribly fun movie, but at the last moment I committed to Reefer Madness: The Musical.

Now in the 1930’s there was a film made, Reefer Madness a hyperbole-filled exploitative movie about the terrors and dangers of the demon weed, marijuana. It passed into public domain, became a bit of a cult film for those with the spine to endure it. (It’s truly is a dreary, boring piece of propaganda.) Much later a playwriting teams took it and turned it into camp musical, keeping much of the dialogue and turning the delivery to take what had been lecture and transforming it into satire.

The stage play was later turned into a film for the pay-cable network, Showtime, and that is what I watched.

It starts Alan Cummings, truly a talented actor and singer, Kristen Bell of Veronica Mars fames, and Christian Campbell, who has been known to lament that his gravestone will note him as the actor who played “Jimmy Harper” the protagonist of this piece.

This is a hilarious bit of movie making. While I myself am not a user of the demon weed, hell I very rarely drink, I stand firmly against the stupid, expensive, and deadly drug-war our nation has engaged in. The movie is filled with wonderful performances, lively and sharp songs, all wrapped in unsubtle digs at the puritanical powers that would have us follow the unquestioning in  this war.

If you like satire, if you like musicals, if you like camp, then this is a movie for you.