This sly guerilla documentary takes pot shots, pun intended, at both the absurdities and victim injustices inherent in the US government's longstanding campaign against lighting up.
The War on the War on Drugs (2005)
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Synopsis: Channeling the anarchic spirit of its 1970s ancestors THE GROOVE TUBE and KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, Cevin Soling's THE WAR ON THE WAR ON DRUGS is a rapid-fire succession of skits and sketches with a unifying anti-authoritarian, pro-drug theme. Shot on video with a team of nonprofessional... Channeling the anarchic spirit of its 1970s ancestors THE GROOVE TUBE and KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, Cevin Soling's THE WAR ON THE WAR ON DRUGS is a rapid-fire succession of skits and sketches with a unifying anti-authoritarian, pro-drug theme. Shot on video with a team of nonprofessional actors, and making use of some grainy public domain footage, Soling's gleeful "throw everything against the wall" mentality is infectious--and while basic physics guarantees that not everything will stick, the bits that do are a lot of fun. Created with short attention spans (Read: intoxication) in mind, the parade of bits includes the Mr. Wizard-inspired "Dr. Science," a children's program in which the titular educator shows how to make LSD before giving his young, uninitiated guest the first sample; a comparison between the elementary school drug-prevention program D.A.R.E. and the Hitler Youth; a serial entitled "Satan's Stepchildren," which consists of old black-and-white movie footage re-dubbed with non sequiturs, and "Frogman Versus Welder," a parody of European art films. Not all of the bits pertain directly to drug use, and the film is at its smartest when it calls the U.S. government on its questionable motives for the consistently failing war on drugs. [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
DVD Info
Release:
Mar 4, 2007
DVD Features:
- Region 0
- NTSC
- Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.78
Audio:
- Dolby Digital - English
Additional Release Materials:
- Outtakes
- Short Film - Government Anti-Drug Film from the 1930s
Reviews
Like so much dope humor, Soling's logic is fuzzy, and you'd have to be pretty high to find any of it funny.
The War on the War on Drugs strings together 60 amateurish short films to tell us drugs are cool, man.
Ineptitude is so thorough here that War on . . . could only make sense as a sinister governmental smear campaign to justify the war on drugs and total sobriety.


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