TMS Movie Review: Cheech & Chong's Last Movie

(Bushell Productions)

The silent generation had Hope & Crosby and Martin & Lewis. Baby boomers and elder Gen X had Cheech & Chong. An old pairing of two comedians with different physical types and setting them up with comedy tropes, but for the era of ‘sex, drugs and rock & roll.’ The duo of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong were the perfect transition from counterculture to mainstream in the 1970s, and we’re now given their memories of the legacy in David Bushell’s documentary Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie. With only the two legends for commentary and the main producer Robbi Chong [Tommy’s daughter], this is clearly a love letter to the chemistry and historical impact of Marin and Chong more than anything.

In many ways, Last Movie feels like a mix of Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers (2021), where we get a variety of archival footage, new footage, scripted sketches, personal photos and fresh animation throughout the feature; and Bernard MacMahon’s Becoming Led Zeppelin (2025), where we feel like we only received the first half of the story with an abrupt ending. The fact that I’m using two music docs for comparison isn’t coincidence either, since you’ll discover from watching the new release Cheech & Chong have just as many connections to the music industry as they do with comedy.

(Bushell Productions)

These two guys went from a successful stage show in the late 1960s, to many hit comedy records and TV appearances in the early 1970s, to starring in movie comedies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They made an anti-establishment schtick with their love of weed a huge moneymaker in the Hollywood game.

Though the execution feels a bit incomplete by ignoring the men’s lives and careers post-1980s, the runtime drags a bit by the end, and it really only scratches the surface on the internal issues faced along the way to stardom [the most interesting segments are when Chong and Marin openly acknowledge the tension between them and their producer-director Lou Adler during the portion on their film success]; the sloppiness of Last Movie also feels a little appropriate for classic Cheech & Chong vibes. Fans will definitely enjoy the reminiscing about the ‘Cheech & Chong’ 1971 record, Up in Smoke (1978), the 1973 novelty single ‘Basketball Jones,’ and other fan favorites. The legendary pair are before my time and I’m not exactly a weed aficionado, but I still had a good time as a fan of 1960s-1980s pop culture; plus the stories on their upbringings as Chinese-Canadian and Mexican-American in the mid-20th century were interesting. So depending on your taste in comedy, interest in C&C or vintage entertainment, Last Movie may or may not be for you.