Clif Lord’s debut feature won the “Golden Leaf” award at the “Maine Cannabis Film Festival,” and that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about it. A lame would-be comedy that wouldn’t be any funnier even if you were smoking the most powerful weed on the planet while watching it, Doobious Sources is a total bummer, man.
The annoyingly named main characters are Zorn Tappadapo (Jason Weissbrod) and Reginald (“The Reg”) Block-Hunsleigh (Jeff Lorch), two stoners and self-styled journalists who run their Los Angeles-based “Instant Karma Investigative News Service” out of a rundown RV. One of their previous stories, dubbed “Straight Guys Who Aren’t,” involved luring unsuspecting men into compromising situations. As a result, they’re now being targeted for violent revenge by an unscrupulous real-estate developer (veteran character actor Joe Cortese, who should have used an assumed name) who fell for their scam.
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The two half-wits, who spend more time filming each other than their supposed subjects, are also hired by a local reporter (Creagen Dow) to help him get the goods on a crooked local politician. Many hijinks, but absolutely no laughs, ensue.
Running a seemingly endless and exhausting 98 minutes, the film proves further irritating with its subpar production values and extensive use of found footage-style video. And though the lead performers struggle mightily to be goofily endearing, they fail miserably.
To be fair, once in a while there’s a clever line, such as “I did not realize I was riding shotgun with Jacques Derrida.” But those are far outnumbered by groaners on the order of “The vagina is a cul-de-sac.” The relentlessly misogynistic and homophobic attempts at humor make you long for the relative sophistication of the Cheech & Chong and Harold & Kumar movies.
Just the sort of embarrassing comedy revolving around the theme of “fake news” that we hardly need right now, Doobious Sources actually manages to take the fun out of smoking pot.
Production company: Doobious Sources
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
Cast: Jason Weissbrod, Jeff Lorch, Creagen Dow, Joe Cortese, Edward James Gage
Director: Clif Lord
Screenwriter: Clif Lord, Tommy Sowards
Producers: Samuel Burton, Concetta Halstead, JJ Lee, Clif Lord
Director of photography: Stephen Treadway
Production designer: Stephanie Wagner
Editors: Concetta Halstead, Miki Miyazaki
Costume designer: Jeannie Flynn
Composers: Christopher Lord, E. Shepherd Stevenson
Casting: Natalie Avital, Julia Kim
98 minutes
