Cheech & Chong's Corsican Brothers

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Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong take a break from their regular stoner routine to offer up a bit of twisted storytelling. This is their take on the Corsican Brothers novella from Alexandre Dumas. So yeah, take that, culture.

The story follows two brothers during the French Revolution. Their twins who have this situation going on where if one of them experiences pleasure or pain, the other is the one who feels it.

The brothers, Lucian (Chong) and Louis (Cheech) together, attempt to overthrow a nasty member of a monarchy named Fuckaire (Roy Dotrice). Meanwhile there's a bit of a love story going on between the brothers and the Queen's daughters, known only as Princess 1 (Shelby Chong) and Princess 2 (Rikki Marin). The only thing that keeps things remotely interesting is the comedy, and even then it's pretty low-brow. I can only imagine what historians and scholars think of this adaptation. You are still definitely getting Cheech & Chong humour here.

Having said that, I tend to enjoy Cheech and Chong's humour, but the thing of it is that it lends itself MUCH more to a stoner comedy. Things can go off the wall in a stoner comedy without many questions needing to be asked. Here, in a piece of literary history, it really doesn't fit. And the sad thing is, this is the only version of the story I actually know. It honestly just makes me wanna do homework and get the real story.

If you know and love Cheech and Chong with some sort of passion, by all means, check it out. It's got all the right ingredients to a good Cheech and Chong movie IF you can accept the fact that marijuana doesn't enter into it at all. Otherwise, Cheech still has his quick one-liners, and Chong's still kind of a lovable dope. But I will say this - any way you slice it, this isn't one of their best works. There are moments, but I've gotten a lot more laughs from their stoner works, again, because the comedy fits better.

The good news is that if you wanna check it out for yourself, you can actually find it in its entirety on YouTube of all places. It's an easy hour and a half watch, but I'll give you fair warning that it may very well end up being a noisy and convoluted hour and a half you'll want back. The funny thing is, I used to actually like this movie back in the day. I dunno what happened, but I kinda find it aggravating to sit through now.

2/5

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