Super Grass

A young man cultivates cannabis plants in his living room. He invites his parents round and offers them some "herbal tea". After this he has to deal with nosey neighbours and his annoying Gran and her elderly friend.

Most people will have seen this short as part of Channel 4's 'Pot Night' in the UK in 1995. This is a fairly straight forward comedy film which doesn't taking itself too seriously. When this film came out there were relatively few "stoner comedies" bar Cheech and Chong and 'Dazed and Confused'. With "cannabis culture" becoming much more mainstream it is easy to write off this film as being unrealistic. Growing cannabis plants in broad daylight!? The film captures the paranoia of grower Greg (Charlie Creed-Miles). His gullible parents played by Sharon Duce and Nick Dunning are good as the suckers who ingest his "green tea" and pot brownies. Then we have his overbearing Gran (Noel Dyson in one of her last roles) and her friend Ursula (Anna Turner) who provide a bit more comic relief and are probably the film's highlight. Derek (Norman Roberts) is Greg's stoner friend who talks nonsense, but the dialogue doesn't quite encapsulate the stoned philosopher vibe as the the later film 'Human Traffic' (1999) does, which has the characters talking complete rhubarb about 'Star Wars'. Then there's a twist ending that I'm sure most viewers will see coming a mile off.

This is a bright, breezy short film with a cast of veteran acting talent. It's maybe not as funny as it should be, but I'm sure most viewers will have a few chuckles. In my opinion the film wasn't as good as 'Kettle People' also shown as part of 'Pot Night'. It's worth a watch and I'm sure the avid cannabis smoker will point out the glaring inaccuracies.