"Humboldt County": Some sober messages in the smoke

As pot flicks go, the latest in that budding (sorry) genre is no "Pineapple Express." "Humboldt County" is a relaxed, sweetly amusing little indie effort that'll make you want to hang out with its inhabitants, except with better snack food than they have. And you can leave by the time they get annoying.

Peter (Jeremy Strong) is an emotionally dead medical student who looks like the distant result of a coupling between David Schwimmer and Pee-Wee Herman. After his harshly demanding professor dad threatens to deny him a residency, Peter has a one-night stand with a girl named Bogart (Fairuza Balk), who role-played with him as a suicidal patient in class and sings in a club at night. She takes him on a long drive to her family's place in the woods of Northern California — where they farm pot.

But don't write this off solely as a fish-out-of-bongwater story. Sure: Peter can't seem to get out of the woods, and as he's forced to spend time with the nice people there — including Brad Dourif as the physics-professor-turned-hippie father and Frances Conroy ("Six Feet Under") as the mom — he loosens up and undergoes a transformation. The story's more about greed and the difficult relationship between fathers and sons. In a funhouse-mirror inversion of Peter's situation, Dourif's character is at odds with his own son (Chris Messina), whose impatience threatens to bring the feds down on the whole benign, living-with-nature-and-smoking-it operation.

Balk's character disappears fairly early. Even though the reason is given, she makes too strong an impression, and her absence is a buzzkill. And along with some predictability, a bit of preachiness mars the film, largely through Dourif's professor character. But resolved: Hippies are preachy. Discuss. And please do not send me material on the wide uses for hemp.

First-time writer-directors Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs have assembled a strong cast around fellow first-timer Strong, augmenting the proceedings with Ernest Hozman's lovely '70s-throwback cinematography.

And to answer your final question: No, you don't need to "prepare" before this one.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259

or mrahner@seattletimes.com