Force Fed Films: Super High Me (2007)

Last week when Puneet watched the Freakonomics documentary he recommended at the end of his review to check out a few of his favorite documentaries. When I saw the name Super High Me, I figured, he must mean Super Size Me, right? When I asked him about it, he showed me the error of my ways, and that there was indeed a movie about getting high for a full month, almost 24/7. I wasn't sure what this movie was going to set out to prove. Maybe it was going to tell me I should smoke tons of pot, maybe it was going to be real preachy. Maybe it was just going to be stupid about it. Hit the joint jump to find my thoughts!


Super High Me follows stand-up comedian Doug Benson as he pledges to completely copy Super Size Me, except with pot instead of McDonald's food. He's an admitted user of marijuana, so to start he needs to have a base line of a full month of never smoking or having any contact with weed or weed products. After that initial month, he then smokes and lights up and eats special brownies and tries to use pretty much every variation of the green that he can get his hands on. During both periods he has medical tests and mental tests  to see if there's any effect.

So what is the end result? What does he prove? Well he really doesn't prove anything at all, other than while you're getting high all the time, you'll put on a TON of weight (81 lbs in 1 month). The majority of the tests they do don't really say much. From the outside though, he certainly seems a lot happier, if also a little useless the whole time. But of course he's going to say it's great while he's on it. If you ask a drunk guy if he's having a good time, he's probably going say yeah, and then hoot and got "WOOOOOOOO!" but that doesn't mean he's actually doing well.

Doug Benson sure loves weed

One problem I saw, and it is pointed out once in a single line that he has people driving him around a lot. He keeps doing his stand-up job and they take him all kinds of places, mainly so that they'll have content for the film. What would probably have been better was if they had left him to his own devices. In the documentary Babies, they never interfere with what's going on and you see natural behavior. I think that if he couldn't drive, then they should have just let him stay in his house. Let us see how messy and F-ed up his place gets if he never cares enough to clean. If he takes cabs, then add that to an expense account and show us how much money he's wasting on the weed and cabs and junk food he must be eating to put on 81 pounds!

Sure it's clear that not much really happens to him; he doesn't have heart failure, he doesn't get sick of smoking up after a month, and he doesn't end up in the hospital. Even so, I think there are probably other factors they ignored because honestly, this wasn't a serious documentary, it almost isn't a documentary at all. Really it's just a pretty lame comedy in which not much happens. Maybe I don't get it, because I've never been high, but this certainly didn't make me want to get high. In fact, it even made it seem kinda pointless.

There's a lot more than just the plant leaves

Other than about 10 minutes spent actually talking to people who use marijuana to treat their pain, and a little bit more time pointing out (repeatedly) that it's legal in California on the state level but not on a federal level, there's nothing to be learned from this. There are a few jokes in his stand up routines that are funny, but anytime they're not showing him on stage I was really bored. Ultimately this is just a lame advertisement for this comedian's stand-up shows, especially if you're a pot-head.

I don't think it matters what I say about this movie. Anyone reading this will already know if they want to see this or not just from the premise alone. But if anything I say does matter to you, Super Size Me is WAY better.