Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical (2005)
Directed by: Andy Fickman
Premise: A musical remake of the 1938 film. Jimmy Harper and Mary Lane (Christian Campbell and Kristen Bell) are clean cut American teenagers whose lives are destroyed by marijuana.
What Works: In 1938, the film Reefer Madness was produced as a polemical docudrama that warned parents that their children were in imminent danger from drugs, specifically marijuana. Reefer Madness was rediscovered in the 1970s and became popular viewing on college campuses and on the midnight movie circuit where it was watched and enjoyed ironically oftentimes by audiences who were under the influence. The 1938 film was adapted into a satirical stage musical which was then produced as a feature film released in 2005. The musical takes a broad approach and it’s consistently funny. The original Reefer Madness has a frenetic moral pitch that is ripe for parody. The filmmakers of the 2005 film clearly took a close look at the 1938 picture and found ways to exploit its absurdities. The cultural context that produced the original Reefer Madness is itself part of the joke; the musical uses a framing device in which a room of parents is shown the film dramatizing the corruption of Jimmy and Mary, giving it a meta touch. The remake picks up on the political climate in which Reefer Madness was produced, ridiculing the racism of the time. The songs of the Reefer Madness musical are frequently fun and well performed and include a lot of jokes in the song lyrics. This is an early title in the filmography of Kristen Bell who is the standout performer of the film.
What Doesn’t: The original Reefer Madness is not good but it’s also short, running just sixty-eight minutes. The musical is nearly two hours and it feels a bit too long. The increased length is largely due to the songs and this version embellishes some aspects of the story. It’s a bit overwrought and the focus is a little too narrow. The Reefer Madness musical sometimes feels like it’s overextending the joke. That is especially true in the conclusion which drags out the ending. The film’s point of reference is sometimes anachronistic. The story is set in 1938, the same year as the original film, but the depiction of teenagers and the anticommunist references are out of the 1950s. This musical was produced in 2005 and it’s particular to that moment. We now live in a world in which marijuana has been legalized or decriminalized in many places which has come with legitimate public health concerns. The original Reefer Madness was rightly ridiculed for its hysteria but the musical parody now comes across as a bit of a strawman.
Disc extras: Trailer.
Bottom Line: Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical is an amusing sendup of the cult film. It’s an uneven movie and twenty years later it isn’t as subversive as it was in 2005 but there is a lot in the Reefer Madness musical that’s fun and entertaining in the spirit of South Park.
Episode: #1044 (April 20, 2025)