Super Size Me (2004)
Many years ago me and my friends rented out Super Size Me because it sounded interesting. The basic premise is about a guy who eats nothing but Mcdonald’s for 30 days for breakfast, lunch and dinner! There are rules in this experiment being that if the person behind the counter asks “Do you want large, or super size” the guy had to except and eat all of it. The film shows the dramatic effect on the guys physical and mental/psychological well-being as he slowly loses it. The real point to the film was showing how the fast food industry’s influence the people at masses via cheap high calorific food with very poor nutritional content and slowly fucks people up while the big corporations makes billions. So in the making of this documentary he consumes an average 5,000 kcal per day during the filming. What the fuck??! 5,000 kcalories is like 9 / 10 Big Macs a day – DAMN, in short life threatening stuff!! So as you’d imagine he puts on about 25 lbs, 13% increase in body mass, cholesterol of 230, has lots of mood swings, suffers from sexual dysfunction, and fat accumulation in his liver. At the end of the movie they tell you if took him 14 months to lose all that weight he’d put on while making this documentary.
The film is a brilliant study of one of those “What If” situations. The poor bastard who has to eat all that junk food in the middle of the movie starts to throw up all the high calorie junk food he’s eating day in day out. I felt really sorry for this dude, because at the end of it we’ve all at some point lived on fast food and probably even Mcdonald’s and have experienced how messed up our body gets the longer he keep doing it. As a stoner in university, at the beginning I pretty much eat Fast Food all year round, and that ended up me becaming a spotty fat ass motherfucka!! With that said, I didn’t do what this guy did and actually “live” on McDonalds 3 times a day!! I don’t think anyone possible can, i.e. as we see him actually phyically vommitting that shit out!! The experiment was brave and well quite evidentially life threatening.
Super High Me (2007) – The Spoof
A really nice idea when intially I heard of this movie. The film is about a guy called Doug Benson who is a comic whom is approached to make a spoof of The Super Size Me film, but instead of eating must smoke weed for 30 days in a row ala Super High Me. Stop.?!!. hold on.. isn’t that what we all kinda do? errr that’s why I’m trying to cut down right… cos errr,& FUCK the 30 days, I smoke all year round and have done for a LONG ASS TIME!! What’s soo special about him smoking for 30 days in a row? Hmmm immediately i’m not impressed as this is like making a film about something we all do, and trying to make it sound like an experiment??? I don’t mean unnecessarily slate the film but I just can’t get over what’s so different that they felt they should make a documentary about it. I’ve read the reviews and one guy calls it “an excuse to showcase his stand up routine” and criticises the movie, quite rightly so I think!! & surely that’s painstakingly obviously true??? Almost a third of the movie is based on his standup jokes.. 
“No that’s trying to show, if him not/smoking effects him on stage!” you cry out. BULLSHIT I say!! it’s exactly what it is, him on stage doing his routine for about a third of the movie. Sure there’s the mention of what he’s doing etc but it doesn’t add relevant content to the “documentary”. Now I’m not gonna say Doug isn’t funny, but I didn’t really laugh. Dave Chapelle on the other oh hell yeah!!! However with all due respect to Doug I watched this movie being sold that it was a documentary, an “experiment” a “study” about weed, so I really wasn’t sure what the stand up comedy was doing in there? Super Size Me on contrast was a much better documentary showing us something we’ve not seen, while I found the point to Super High Me lost somewhere in the movie. I think he was trying to show that he was the same stoned as he was sober, which is a contradiction in terms….
Things I Liked
I liked all the info bites and clips i.e. the actually documentary parts!!!! – especially regarding how California State Law and Federal Law conflict each other. This was fascinating and very interesting on how the D.E.A delt with the number of grow houses popping up around California. Also it was nice to see the film subtly try and encourage the use of vaporisers to inhale vapour more healthily with less carcinogenic properties. I also really emphasised with watching him quit for 30 days while being around other stoners – I totally felt that!! While also appreciating that the world is against smoking weed – he really to stood up for weed smokers and tried to show that people can lives despite smoking weed everyday. Obviously medicine tells us otherwise that our lungs weren’t made to have this thick tarlike smoke pulled into our lungs, but he does eat the weed chocolate bars (which was AWESOME BY THE WAY!!! – fucking jealous) these are 100% carcinogen free!!
What Would Have Been Better?
Why choose a stoner??? and make him smoke 30 days …. this makes absolutely no sense to me!! that’s like me making a film about me drinking coffee everyday?? so FUCKING what?? Had they taken a NON-STONER, possibly somebody that’s never smoked a joint in his life would have been infinitely more interesting watching how it affected him. The tests they carried out had lots of potential to be interesting but Doug even in the film didn’t seem interested in answering the questionnaires or really taking part and that’s while he wasn’t high.
The Point To It All
This film really showed us nothing experimentally because we all know and many of us experience this on a daily basis. If you have got used to incorporating smoking weed into your daily routine, like the millions of the people out there that have, sure you can get on with your daily grind and get your shit done but the biggest question I’ve asked on howiquitweed.com is after smoking weed for years back to back, “Is this your best self coming out?” Lets not forget all that medical research and lets be honest our own experiences of memory loss due to smoking to much. Can you really say deny all of this like the movie tries to in many ways like saying he scored more in S.A.T by being high? “No i’ve done it also MAN!!!” somebody always yells out!! The test was crap anyway….A real test would had been to try and learn something new, and compare his recall ability high versus non-high. Weed doesn’t make you stupid, it does however put you into a nice relaxed tunnel vision style world, where you can easily forget you left the stove on, or something crazy?!! Hey it’s happened to all of us, and that’s where the stoners get a lot of their reputation from…yeap other stoners making fun!!
What Did You Say About Me?!?
So I finished watching this and I started googling what other people thought of the film! It seems the critics and just anybody who spoke bad of this “documentary” all got abuse from mainly stoners, almost like as if they were trying to protect their holy grail. I totally get this, the film showed people themselves i.e. its him smoking weed around the clock, getting high wayyy too much like we all do and generally doing alright in life. It totally pandered to the people out there who over smoke to the point where there’s even a scene where he talks about paying his mum’s bills for a glasses – wooooow, what a perfect example to society! [at that point you hear Nate Dogg singing ‘SMOKE WEED EVERYDAY!’] For ultimately isn’t this what every person who habours regrets about over smoking wants to hear – it’s the feel good movie for Stoner. Cos lets be honest EVERYWHERE else they’re being bombarded with images of “SMOKING WEED WILL KILL YOU MOTHERFUCKA!”