This film is like the pre-cursor to Portlandia as it takes place in Portland and is an odd comedy. It is sort of like a mash-up of Wes Anderson meets Cheech and Chong movies. It's not a broad comedy, more of a deadpan and subtle look at Portland subculture in the 90s. There are also tons of good one- liners in the film and is a very likable movie. Richard Sears successfully piques one's curiosity from the beginning. I'm amazed by how overlooked this movie apparently is. Bongwater has a couple of dark moments, but is overall a very funny movie in the comedic vein of Seinfeld. Solid performance from Luke Wilson, and Jack Black cameo. See it to laugh about the absurd little things in life.

Bongwater, although its title misleads many people to think of it as a stoner film, is a solid drama/comedy title in the vein of films like Drugstore Cowboy, an 80's film featuring Matt Dillon, or Trainspotting, except with less drug use and more sexual promiscuity - Bongwater, in short, is not a drug-centric movie. However, it is interesting because of its cast. Its obviously bare-bones script requires careful acting from its stars to give it a little extra life. Overall, maybe not enough of that extra energy is awarded to the by-the-rules directing style, but ultimately, what comes out is a solid, engaging flick, worth watching all the way through.

What a waste of a great cast. Figured I'd check it out because it looked like a good stoner comedy with a lot of fairly well-known actors. What it turned out to be was a pointless collection of boring intertwining stories about several characters with minimal connections with each other. Characters who start off looking like decent people but end up with not a single likable or interesting characteristic among them. Calling it a comedy was a stretch as well...the only thing that made me chuckle was Jack Black's song, which was basically Tenacious D. I waited for something big to happen but ended up with nothing more than 97 minutes of my life wasted.

One of the saddest experiences is encountering a movie that has almost all the right things to be successful. It has all the ingredients, perhaps all the right perspectives, but not the requisite skills to bring it to a coherence that pierces. This is one of those movies, and its apt that is about characters whose lives are in the same uncooked limbo.About the actors. The men in this all went on to greater careers, essentially doing the characters they do here. The women. Well, their careers have all been stuck, and yet they do at least as well here.One of these is Alica Witt. She was sort a special icon for a while after her remarkable one line in Lynch's otherwise disastrous "Dune." Lynch was so smitten that when Sting did Figgis' first movie, he clued him in. Figgus subsequently used her as an icon in "Liebstraum," and she appeared similarly in "Vanilla Sky," as a cinematic marker.Here she is early in her career, playing a woman on the edge. Its a typical role for an ingénue, a free spirit constrained by society and her own foibles that revolve around men. Natalie Porman made this role work in "Closer." Mia Kirshner did so in the much more complex "Exotica." Witt almost does here, and somehow the failure touches more.Here she is before unadvisedly removing that bump in her nose, trying her guts out. She is raped late in the story, and the few moments after — so far as I know — are the high point of her adult career.There's one sequence in the film that does work. It doesn't involve Witt. Luke Wilson's character is a pot dealer. He takes his new girlfriend on a collection trip to a camping commune, led by Jack Black. She has replaced Witt, though Witt found her to sponsor a show of Wilson's sophomoric art.Once they arrive everyone takes acid. The girl and Black (who is terrific) hit it off. Wilson hallucinates his mother into existence, where she serves an iridescent lemonade. This whole sequence works, and I imagine it was the first one created. There's nuance, and I prefer to believe that all that follows — even the existence of the Witt character — is part of the trip.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.