Imagine a jelly donut with all the jelly sucked out of it, or more appropriately, a big fat joint full of garlic instead of sweet marijuana. They'd both offer the same experience as the shockingly terrible Puff, Puff, Pass, an alleged comedy that, for some bizarre reason, has had all the humor sucked out of it.

Let me see if I can do the plot justice here: Larry and Rico are a pair of moron stoner buddies (no lie, they make Bill & Ted look like Oxford & Yale) who refuse to pay their rent and plan to start a business selling "tiny ads" just like they learned on an infomercial. But after losing their apartment, the idiots decide to visit rehab -- but only because the rehab place has cable. The dolts spend just enough time in rehab to have sex with a jesus freak and a fat girl, and then they're tossed out on the street. Then they head over to a local tycoon's house and land a job delivering a suitcase full of valuable coins ... and then the movie just sort of ends.

Wow. It's been a while since I've seen something this bad. Drab, stupid, boring, amateurish, infantile, and aggressively unfunny by any imaginable measure, Puff, Puff, Pass (which was previously known as Easier, Softer Way, which seems logical since neither title makes any sense) is an absolute embarrassment from start to finish. Starring Danny Masterson, co-writer Donnie Warner, and (first-time director) Mekhi Phifer (and packing some curiously humiliating cameos from Terry Crews, John C. McGinley, and Darrell Hammond), this is easily one of the worst stoner comedies ever made. And we're talking about a sub-genre that lists Grandma's Boy, High Times Pot Luck, and Cheech & Chong's Still Smokin' among its smelly ranks.

The thing honestly feels like it was just made up on the spot, with little to no regard for components like wit, creativity, characterization, or the simple art of coherent comedic storytelling. PPP is just a bunch of aimlessly annoying stoner-dude banter, infused with a laundry list of painful running gags. The jokes awesome enough to warrant repeat visits include? Try this one: Masterson walks out of a bathroom as several people hold their noses and groan about the smelly poop. The flick also exhibits an absurdly unfunny obsession with The Shawshank Redemption and prison rape -- plus there's an oft-repeated joke about how "tiny ads sales are complex" that's never once close to amusing, but of course it's recycled about 12 times.

This one defies description, frankly. It's as if some stoner actor's home movies somehow got released onto DVD.

The DVD

Video: It's a fairly hazy widescreen presentation, but you'll probably be too baked to notice.

Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 English or 2.0 French, with optional subtitles in the same two languages.

Extras: Just a bunch of previews for The Tenants, Hostel, London, Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, When a Stranger Calls, Underworld: Evolution, Ultraviolet, The Pink Panther, Freedomland, MirrorMask, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (which is the only funny thing on this whole damn DVD).

Final Thoughts

It's just painful from stem to stern, and even the glassiest-eyeballed stoners will be hard pressed to sit through the whole interminable thing. No amount of marijuana could make this flick funny -- and believe me, I tried.