Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie 1980

In a rambunctious, freewheeling comedy, Cheech Marin as Cheech and Tommy Chong as Chong kick off a day that should have been ordinary but quickly spirals into a dizzying spree of mischief. The duo scheme to siphon gasoline for their neighbor’s car, a caper they insist they’ve “borrowed,” and they drift from one scene to the next with a reckless, contagious energy. Cheech heads off to a movie studio for a day of work, while Chong hunts for a roach and blasts an indoor motorcycle to earth-shaking volume, turning quiet streets into a living room-sized roar that rattles the neighborhood walls. The contrast between the two friends’ nonchalant hustle and the noisy fallout around them sets the tone for a day that refuses to follow any rules.

That day takes a sharp turn when Cheech gets fired for bringing a studio van home without permission, a petty setback that only fuels their plans for the afternoon. They decide to visit Donna, played by Rita Wilson, Cheech’s off-and-on girlfriend, and Cheech springs a bold, albeit chaotic, charm offensive. The encounter pulls Donna into a web of trouble with her boss, and soon the duo is kicked out of the building. Undeterred, they drift toward new ways to cash in on their luck, riffing on ideas and songs that poke at their own identities with a gleeful irreverence. They improvise lines and melodies on the fly, attempting songs like Mexican Americans and Beaners, which sit at the heart of their makeshift hustle and give the film its irreverent, performative pulse.

As the phones ring with mistaken seriousness, Cheech answers a call that leads to a date with Donna, while Chong heads out to clear the air and maybe grab a little extra thrill. Instead, Cheech’s cousin Red appears in a muddled swirl of money problems and bad timing, prompting Cheech to call Chong to grab him and bring him along for the ride. They chase up to a hotel where Red is staying, only to find the receptionist locked into a dispute over room fees. Red’s luggage—boombox, a suitcase, and a heavy bag of high-grade marijuana—becomes the focal point of a chaotic scramble, and what follows is a mix of break-ins, mistaken arrests, and a quickly escalating farce in which the wrong man is hauled away by the cops.

The misadventure expands when a roller-skater lures them toward a “party” that turns out to be a brothel. The night devolves into raucous laughter, weed-sharing, and a Jacuzzi misadventure, until a loud recording from Red’s boombox sends the joint into a panic. A loose-knit group of companions, including one of the sex workers from the brothel, join the pair as they chase further escapades along Sunset Boulevard. Their evening intersects a music-store escapade on Ventura Boulevard and a ride in a parents’ Rolls-Royce, where a shared spliff and a wild optimism propel them toward a stand-up venue. There, the chaos hardens into a confrontation with the hotel receptionist and a towering bouncer, triggering a street-level melee that feels like a carnival goosed by trouble.

That night the duo are pursued by the law as they poke around Red’s cannabis fields in the countryside, setting off fireworks that light up the sky and draw more attention than they can handle. Then the unthinkable happens: they’re abducted by a UFO, a surreal twist that whirls around their weed-fueled misfortune and along with several of the cannabis plants. Amid the craziness, Cheech experiences a surge of adrenaline and romance that leaves him exhausted enough to sleep through the night’s pivotal moments. He awakens to discover Chong—who has also been abducted—returning in a fever of bravado, dressed like a cross between a conqueror of old and a berserker, clutching a jar of “space coke” that he swears will blow your head off. The discovery sends Cheech into a frenzy, and the two of them leap back into action, trashing their neighbor’s house in a wild, disoriented blaze of energy that only they could conjure.

What follows is a final leap into the unknown, as Cheech and Chong barrel through the neighbor’s roof and tumble into outer space, their high taking on an expansive, cinematic scale. The space-bound duo ride a surreal journey that culminates in an animated sequence where they ascend into a blunt that launches them toward a starry horizon. The closing caption—“That’s It Man!”—caps a fever dream of a day that began with a conservative theft and ended with a cosmic ascent, a ridiculous ascent that somehow feels earned by their unflinching, comic bravado.

That’s It Man!