Reefer Madness/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



Reefer Madness provides examples of:

  • Anvilicious
  • Critical Research Failure: Though the gross egregiousness of it is much more hilariously noticeable now that marijuana use is much more widespread and its effects a great deal more common knowledge than when the film came out, anyone with half a functioning brain should have known by the manipulativeness and slanted angle of the film how trustworthy it was even then.
    • Even then, the truth was the final product was simply using Drugs Are Bad as an excuse to show behavior that wouldn't otherwise pass the Hays Code.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: The weird piano player from the soda shop. He's even the title image for the Riff Trax stream of the movie on Hulu.
  • Narm/NarmCharm
  • Periphery Demographic: Stoners LOVE this movie.

The Musical (and the movie based on it) contain examples of:

  • Anvilicious: The movie's message for freedom of speech is, somehow, just as bad as the original movie's anti-drug message.
  • Cargo Ship: Jimmy with a pot brownie in the movie's Brownie Song sequence.
  • Critical Research Failure: Played for laughs and even lampshaded in the movie, in the treatment of Marijuana. Actors on stage are often told to act like they're on crack, rather than marijuana.
  • Cross the Line Twice: Every scene seems to find a new line to cross. You'd think the zenith of it's audacity would be when Jesus shows up to tell the main character to stop smoking pot. It isn't.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: If you're into theater, you know that the note hit by May during The Stuff (on the lyric when Jack gets stoned and RAPES ME!) is incredibly hard to hit well. It's known colloquially backstage as the Rape Note and is the main barrier for casting May.
  • Ear Worm: People may find themselves humming Listen To Jesus Jimmy months after seeing it.
  • Everyone Is Satan in Hell: Played for laughs, as even smoking pot once will get you condemned to Hell.