There’s an often-memed moment in the 1998 Dave Chappelle comedy “Half Baked” where Chappelle’s character, Thurgood, tries to go to rehab for his dependence on cannabis. In the scene, the other, “real,” addicts lambast him for claiming to be addicted to weed. The late “Full House” star Bob Saget makes a cameo appearance and asks Thurgood if he’s ever performed fellatio in exchange for pot, positing that if a substance doesn’t bring you low enough to perform sex work to fullfill your cravings, then it doesn’t truly count as a drug like cocaine or heroin.
As legalization and decriminalization have made cannabis more mainstream culturally, the idea that it is impossible to be addicted to it has become more commonplace. But the 2013 film “Newlyweeds” explores this fallacy in ways that are hilarious and haunting in equal measure.
As legalization and decriminalization have made cannabis more mainstream culturally, the idea that it is impossible to be addicted to it has become more commonplace. But the 2013 film “Newlyweeds” explores this fallacy in ways that are hilarious and haunting in equal measure.
The debut feature from “Judas and the Black Messiah” director Shaka King, “Newlyweeds” explores a unique kind of love triangle. Lyle (Amari Cheatom) works as a repo man for a Rent-A-Center clone while his girlfriend, Nina (Trae Harris), hosts student tours at a local museum. Whenever they’re not working, their recreation is entirely centered around getting stoned, vegging out, sharing stories about dreams they’ve had, and exploring places they would love to travel.
In a different kind of film, the intruder in their otherwise content relationship would be Colman Domingo’s character, Chico (Nina’s colleague), who takes a liking to her. Chico smells weed on her clothes during a shift and shows off some Mongolian hash he got from his travels abroad as an in to hang out with her. But though Chico’s presence is a catalyst for drama, the third point of the triangle is weed itself.
Lyle’s consumption levels far outpace Nina’s. She discovers that he consistently over-purchases from his dealer, Two For Three (played by Hassan Johnson from “The Wire”), whenever it’s time to re-up, so he can have a separate stash for himself. Lyle reacts to this revelation with the same energy a cheater might when someone finds their phone face up for a change. He downplays it, but from that point on, the hold weed has on him becomes too glaring to ignore.
We see the ways Lyle’s reliance on bud impacts his own life as well as those around him. When we first meet him on the job, he and his dirtbag coworker stalk a disabled man back to his apartment to repo his couch, going so far as to threaten his cat to facilitate the furniture removal. When they’re back in their van, Lyle realizes he got the addresses mixed up, and that he essentially just robbed someone in the process. He turns down an offer to swig some liquor on the job, correctly noting how unprofessional it is, but he doesn’t consider blowing weed smoke in an enclosed space with a guy due for a piss test in a week to be the same level of inconsiderate.
Throughout the film, King’s direction captures disparate elements of being under the influence in entertaining ways that slowly give way to a more harrowing tone. Early on, Lyle has a stoned fantasy about catching a repo target who keeps evading him. Lyle envisions himself and his coworker as private eyes in a blaxploitation film, a daydream that inspires him to tail her in an elaborate costume as a drunk uncle on the phone, yammering on about scoring Shalamar tickets while quoting Ike Turner dialogue from “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”
King also distills the other sides of being high when Lyle experiences a paranoid vision of Nina and Chico in a deceitful embrace. These scenes, alongside more comical sequences such as when a student from one of Nina’s tours accidentally eats her weed brownies and is haunted by visions of his dead grandmother telling him she’s in hell, are all colorful, if quirky, plays right out of the stoner comedy handbook.
But the film’s back half — showcasing the way Lyle spirals when he’s out of bud — transforms the picture into something more depressing. After repeated failures to score, Lyle finds someone holding, only to recoil when they hand him a crack vial instead of a dub. In the dealer’s defense, he remarks that Lyle had “a real crack look about him” — partially a punch line about the powder doughnut residue on his lips from snacking while he waits, but also a genuine observation about how rough he looks after going a mere six hours without smoke.
It only gets more dispiriting from there. After things with Nina go south, Lyle trades smoking for drinking, spending most of his time in the streets. Eventually, he accepts charity from Two For Three, who can’t stand to see how far Lyle has fallen. But rather than take Two for Three’s advice to pursue self-betterment alongside the money, Lyle invests the funds into a misguided, grand romantic gesture to try to win Nina back. The nature of the solution he arrives at makes it clear that his dependence on weed isn’t strictly chemical. It’s the escape he’s addicted to.
Lyle returns to getting high so readily because it’s the only available respite he has from the grind of his dead-end job and the persistent sense that his life will never improve beyond the temporary numbing that comes with being too far gone to properly process the world around him.
King’s blending of straightforward drama and surrealist comedy has a tone that might remind new viewers of Donald Glover’s “Atlanta” series, despite beating that show to the punch by a few years. Hints of the kind of storyteller he would become for “Judas” are on display as well, particularly during a claustrophobic chase sequence inside the loping labyrinth of a corner store.
But it’s the way King presents the world as a perpetual haze that makes “Newlyweeds” work so well. Lyle begins to lose Nina when he thinks that her desire to travel to the Galapagos Islands with him is a joke — idle weed chatter. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see the world with her. He just can’t fathom something that aspirational ever becoming a real possibility. When your reality feels so boxed in, any hopes outside of it can only be seen as pipe dreams.
“Newlyweeds” is available to rent at Beyond Video, 2545 N. Howard Street.