Directed by David Bushell | 120 min | ▲▲▲

Driven by nostalgia, this documentary will be a welcome trip back in time for fans of the famously stoned comedians whose career reached its peak in the 1970s with a series of records, wildly successful stand-up tours, and box-office hit movies like Up In Smoke. It serves as an illuminating biography of Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong  — they met in Vancouver in the late 1960s but had interesting lives long before that.

Chong especially, was a songwriter who cultivated two families, but unsurprisingly given their rebel stance, they both had religious upbringing. They plugged into the underserved stoner culture with iconic, unmistakably funny routines, and the fact neither was white gave them an outsider status that may have aided their counterculture image.

A wealth of terrific archival footage of their many gags, and early interviews — including a very era-specific one at the Playboy Mansion — is good fun, but it’s wrapped in a present day conceit of Cheech and Chong driving through the desert in a Rolls Royce looking for a joint called Dave’s. That stuff works sporadically, or not at all. It gets interesting in the final few minutes of the movie when the funnymen rehash old animosities — ye olde story of clashing egos set them at odds back in the ’80s, and clearly not all of that bad blood has been resolved.

The film suffers for not offering more of the testimony of folks who knew them back in the day beyond record mogul, Lou Adler. Chong’s wife and ex-wife both cameo, but it would’ve been great to hear more from them and other family members (where’s Rae Dawn?), as well as the comedians who they inspired — Dave Chapelle owes a lot to these guys.

All that said, if you gobble a gummy or roll a fatty to accompany you, this trip could be worth your while.