Half Baked

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

I kind of liked this slow, stoner comedy.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Reefer mildness.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The plot is simply an excuse for a string of good-natured dope jokes (come on -- you have to love that their hookah is called Billy Bong Thornton) and goofy sight gags inspired by everything from Jerry Garcia to Jerry Maguire, most of which are undoubtedly funniest if you're eight miles high.

Entertainment Weekly Michael Sauter

Sitting on your couch watching these morons sit on their couch and get wasted is like being the only straight guest at a pot party. Everyone else is laughing, and you're left wondering why.

Variety Brendan Kelly

A couple of hash brownies short of a satisfying cinematic picnic, with far too few comic highs during the bigscreen reefer party.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

The main problem, however, is Tamra Davis' leaden direction, which prevents Half-Baked from developing comic momentum. There are a few scattered laughs.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

But their comic talents are completely wasted by an inane script whose idea of humor is to make jokes about lung cancer and the notorious Tuskegee experiment on black men with syphilis. [20 Jan 1998]

Austin Chronicle Russell Smith

The humor in this movie is basically anthropological notes on doper culture and behavior: junk-food frenzies, smoking rituals and hardware, non sequitur conversation, and short-term memory loss. In other words, stuff that passed into the realm of cliché back in the time of the Johnson administration.

Film Threat Ron Wells

The title refers to your expected condition when you see this movie. Oh well. It'll be HUGE on video.

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

The film's deadly lulls outweigh its infrequent highs.

The New York Times Lawrence Van Gelder

Not very funny, intellignet or grippingly plotted, it is likely to appeal only to those who think that anything to do with marijuana - smoking, sharing, stealing or selling - constitutes the Everest of rip-roaring hilarity. [17 Jan 1998]

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Someone definitely inhaled too much before making this one.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Paying homage to drug comedies of the '70s, Half Baked is high on getting high and low on laughs.

Los Angeles Times Bob Heisler

A limp, predictable less-than-sitcom of a movie. It's a bomb, man, not the bomb.