"Super High Me": Dude, we're just not feelin' your buzz

However benign you may think its subject is, "Super High Me" is proof that stoned people are rarely as funny as they think they are, just the same as your coked-up friends are never as interesting as they think they sound.

Inspired by "Super Size Me," in which Morgan Spurlock documented his physical deterioration from eating nothing but McDonald's swill for 30 days, comedian Doug Benson decides to do the same with weed. Benson, who created/wrote/starred in "The Marijuana-Logues," first goes cold turkey for 30 days, then smokes like Cheech and Chong combined for another 30. Along the way, he has assorted experts measure his physical and mental health; visits legal dispensaries in California, where medical marijuana is legal; and intersperses it all with riffs in his stand-up act at clubs around the country — like you'd see in a "Seinfeld" episode if Jerry were obsessed with a single subject.

Asked why he likes pot so much, Benson replies, "It makes everything more fun."

For him. While Spurlock's stunt yielded unsettling results, Benson's isn't much of a revelation, and it's more amiable than funny. Directed by one-time "Daily Show" correspondent Michael Blieden, the documentary has professional-caliber on-screen graphics (and narration from ex-"Daily Show" guy Brian Unger), but the video footage is so distractingly poor that it makes "The Blair Witch Project" look like "The English Patient" — or rather, "The English Glaucoma Patient."

Benson's math skills suffer while he's slit-eyed, and he puts on just a few pounds during the binge, but tests show other health effects are negligible and not permanent. Newsflash there. Another newsflash: A comedian's life — as opposed to a pilot or a neurosurgeon's — doesn't exactly come apart at the seams from this kind of experiment.

Along the way, Benson talks about pot with lots of comic friends such as Patton Oswalt and Sarah Silverman (who torches up on-screen). He also spends plenty of time with pot advocates frustrated by the hassles from the federal government and DEA, which don't recognize the state's rights spelled out in the 10th Amendment. And in the end, this is a weak advocacy film without much to interest anyone else.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com