The stoner movie is one of the few genres that can be traced to a single ancestor, and that ancestor was trying to scare people. What followed was the better part of a century of comedies, a few dramas, and eventually documentaries that treated cannabis as a subject rather than a punchline.
This is the canon, in order of release, with titles, years and directors. No plot spoilers, no ranking that pretends to be objective.
The features, in order of release
- Reefer Madness (1936), directed by Louis J. Gasnier. Originally released as Tell Your Children, a cautionary film reportedly funded by a religious group and later retitled and reissued for exploitation audiences. Sources disagree on the year and on when the Reefer Madness title arrived, which we cover in our full history of Reefer Madness.
- Up in Smoke (1978), directed by Lou Adler. The Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong feature that created the template every later stoner comedy borrowed from. Some catalogs list it under the fuller title Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke.
- Cheech and Chong's Next Movie (1980), directed by Tommy Chong. The follow-up, and the point at which the duo's style became a genre rather than a one-off.
- Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), directed by Amy Heckerling. Not a cannabis film as such, but Sean Penn's Jeff Spicoli fixed the laid-back stoner archetype in American comedy.
- Dazed and Confused (1993), directed by Richard Linklater. A last-day-of-school ensemble set in 1976, and the film that made the genre feel nostalgic rather than countercultural.
- Friday (1995), directed by F. Gary Gray. A single day on one street in South Central Los Angeles, and the start of a franchise.
- Half Baked (1998), directed by Tamra Davis. Co-written by and starring Dave Chappelle, and one of the most-quoted entries in the genre.
- The Big Lebowski (1998), directed by Joel Coen. A Raymond Chandler plot handed to a man in a bathrobe. Wikipedia notes Ethan Coen co-directed without credit.
- Saving Grace (2000), directed by Nigel Cole. A British entry, which matters because the genre is otherwise overwhelmingly American.
- The Wash (2001), directed by DJ Pooh. A car-wash comedy starring Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.
- How High (2001), directed by Jesse Dylan. Method Man and Redman go to Harvard. The most direct hip-hop crossover in the genre.
- Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), directed by Danny Leiner. Released internationally as Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies.
- Soul Plane (2004), directed by Jessy Terrero. An airline comedy built around an ensemble cast.
- Grandma's Boy (2006), directed by Nicholaus Goossen. A video-game studio comedy with a long afterlife on home video.
- Puff, Puff, Pass (2006), directed by Mekhi Phifer, who also acts in it. Usually written with both commas.
- Smiley Face (2007), directed by Gregg Araki. Anna Faris carries almost the entire film alone, which no other entry in the genre attempts.
- Humboldt County (2008), directed by Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs. The premise is cultivation rather than consumption, which makes it the odd one out here.
- Pineapple Express (2008), directed by David Gordon Green. The film that pulled the genre into studio-budget action comedy.
- Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008), directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.
- Your Highness (2011), directed by David Gordon Green. A medieval fantasy from the Pineapple Express director, and the genre's odd excursion into studio fantasy.
- Ted (2012), directed by Seth MacFarlane.
- Kid Cannabis (2014), directed by John Stockwell. A dramatization of a real Idaho smuggling case, and the only entry on this list with a true-crime backbone.
Documentaries
The documentaries are where the subject gets treated seriously, and they are the half of this genre most people have never worked through.
- The Union: The Business Behind Getting High (2007). An examination of the economics of prohibition in Canada. Sources disagree on the directing credit, with Wikipedia and Letterboxd naming Brett Harvey and at least one listing crediting Adam Scorgie.
- Super High Me (2007), directed by Michael Blieden. Comedian Doug Benson documents thirty days without cannabis followed by thirty days of constant use. It premiered at festivals in 2007 with limited theatrical release the following year. Its methods were never intended as science.
- The Culture High (2014), directed by Brett Harvey. The sequel to The Union, wider in scope and angrier in tone.
- Rolling Papers (2015), directed by Mitch Dickman. Follows The Denver Post as it built cannabis coverage after Colorado legalized. It premiered at SXSW in 2015 and reached theaters in 2016.
- Weed the People (2018), directed by Abby Epstein. Premiered at SXSW with a limited theatrical run in October of that year.
- Grass Is Greener (2019), directed by Fab Five Freddy. A Netflix documentary connecting cannabis prohibition to jazz, hip-hop and the racial history of American drug enforcement. It pairs directly with what we covered in cannabis and hip-hop.
Note the title carefully: Grass Is Greener takes no definite article. The Grass Is Greener (1960) is an unrelated Stanley Donen romantic comedy, and the two get confused in listings.
Television
Series belong in a separate category, because the format changes what the subject can do with it.
- Weeds (2005 to 2012, Showtime), created by Jenji Kohan. A suburban widow starts dealing, and the series becomes a study of an illegal market's economics.
- Trailer Park Boys (Showcase from 2001, Netflix from 2014), created by Mike Clattenburg. Cannabis is a recurring engine rather than the premise.
- Broad City (2014 to 2019, Comedy Central), created by Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson. A general sitcom rather than a cannabis show, included because it is consistently listed as one.
- Disjointed (2017 to 2018, Netflix), created by David Javerbaum and Chuck Lorre. A dispensary sitcom that arrived just as legalization made its premise outdated.
- Cooked with Cannabis (2020, Netflix), hosted by Kelis. A cooking competition, and the clearest sign of the subject going mainstream.
If you came here from Kid Cannabis
The most common question this list gets is what to watch after Kid Cannabis, and the honest answer is that the film has no close relatives. It is a crime drama that happens to involve cannabis, not a comedy.
What it does have is a real case behind it. We wrote about what actually happened to the people involved, and where they are now, in the Kid Cannabis case, two decades later. If the film is what brought you here, the real story is the better read.
For the drama rather than the comedy, Humboldt County and Saving Grace are the closest tonal matches on this list. For the true-crime angle specifically, the documentaries are a better fit than any of the features.
Two things this list does not do
It does not tell you where to stream anything. Rights move constantly, and a list of services is wrong within months of being written. Search the title on whatever you subscribe to.
It does not rank the films. Every ranked version of this list is somebody's taste presented as a verdict. Release order at least tells you something true, which is how the genre changed: propaganda, then counterculture, then nostalgia, then studio comedy, then documentary.
What the timeline actually shows
Read in order, the list tracks a shift in what the films assume about their audience. Reefer Madness assumes you have never encountered cannabis and should be terrified of it. Up in Smoke assumes you know exactly what it is and that the joke is the people who do not. Pineapple Express assumes nobody needs the premise explained at all. By the time you reach Grass Is Greener and Weed the People, the films are not about cannabis as a subject so much as about the law around it, which is a topic we cover separately in how countries legalized cannabis.
Sources and further reading
- Reefer Madness — on the original Tell Your Children release and the film's later reissues
- Tell Your Children — the AFI Catalog record, which dates the film differently
- Up in Smoke — release details and the fuller Cheech and Chong title
- Grass Is Greener — the 2019 documentary, not to be confused with the 1960 feature
- The Union: The Business Behind Getting High — where the directing credit is given to Brett Harvey
- Weeds — run dates and episode counts
This article is for general information for adults 21 and older. Film release dates and credits are as recorded by the sources listed above, which occasionally disagree. Information is current as of September 28, 2026.
