Watching this stoner comedy feels like the cinematic equivalent of listening to someone tell you about their dream. I’m sure it was really intense when it originated in writer/co-directors Dan Fogler and Michael Canzoniero’s heads, but it makes so little sense on-screen that all you can do is nod along vaguely sympathetically at its sheer creative bravado.
Fogler (Broadway’s “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”) is Warren Allman, a burly, unemployed graphic novelist whose sedentary life is uprooted when he’s hit with a bead of apparently magical sweat from a doomsday-prophet homeless man. Allman descends into a mental breakdown of epic proportions, much of which revolves around apocalyptic 2012 predictions.
In among the hallucinations are cameos by Anne Hathaway, Josh Duhamel, Wallace Shawn and Topher Grace, who I assume were more in on the point of this film than the audience will be. Still, this “Don Peyote” doesn’t even have a windmill to tilt at.