Silas (Method Man) and Jamal (Redman) go to Harvard. (From Universal Pictures)

Weed-scapades are popular among stoners looking for the perfect entertainment to please their hazy minds. From “Half-Baked” and the “Harold and Kumar” series to Seth Rogen’s endless bromedies like “Pineapple Express,” stoner films have carved their own niche in the comedy genre.

But a good pot adventure is actually quite difficult to make. It’s the difference between a baggie of shwag and a jar of kush. And trust, the latter is better.

“How High” stars rappers Method Man (a.k.a. Clifford Smith) and Redman (a.k.a. Reginald “Reggie" Noble). After pursuing solo music careers, the two, who have known each other since childhood, eventually worked together in the studio for the 1999 album “Blackout!” — originally titled "Amerikas Most Blunted" and includes a song titled "How High." The music collaboration led to hit singles such as "Y.O.U." and "Da Rockwilder" and helped make the album go platinum. Though the film “How High” is Method Man and Redman’s first time on the big screen together, their real-life chemistry lends to the credibility of their characters’ friendship in the hilarious stoner comedy.

Silas P. Silas (Method Man) is a man with an herbal cure for every ailment possible — poor appetite, headaches and a stalled libido are just a few problems that his special strains of marijuana can heal. Silas’ “Garden of Weeden” satisfies an endless stream of customers, including friend Ivory (Chuck Davis). Silas' friend, who rocks a soul patch unibrow, tells him he has the potential to be a success story from the projects, putting the “power of healing in the hands of the common man.” But in a blazing instant, poor Ivory meets a horrific yet hilarious death while watching “Field of Dreams.” So in his honor, Silas scatters Ivory’s ashes on his newest budding marijuana plant. 

Jamal King (Redman), on the other hand, has spent the last six years in a two-year community college. After Jamal is arrested for marijuana possession, a frustrated Mamma King (Anna Maria Horsford) threatens to cut him off unless he enrolls full-time in a university.

The two slacker stoners sign up to take their Testing for High Credentials exams, or THCs, so they can apply for college. Each decides to smoke as inspiration before the test — because getting high, of course, means high grades — but they soon realize they’re missing essentials. A quick glance across the parking lot, though, and their problems are solved. 

“Got blunt?”

“Got weed?”

And thus a friendship is born.

But in the hotboxed car, Silas and Jamal realize they’re not alone. Smoking the weed fertilized with Ivory's ashes allows them to see his ghost. Ivory offers to help the two pass their exams because in the afterlife, he has befriended brilliant minds like Socrates, Nietzche and even the test maker.

Silas and Jamal undoubtedly receive perfect scores — in fact, they're the first ever recorded in the history of the test — which draws the attention of college recruiters nationwide. 

On paper, Silas and Jamal are exactly what Harvard is looking for. The prestigious university, headed by administrators Chancellor Huntley (Fred Willard) and Dean Carl Cain (Obba Babatundé), make “getting some color” in the student body a high priority. And it's Silas and Jamal’s acceptance to Harvard that sparks the film’s commentary on how racial perceptions continue to permeate society today.

Like Elle Woods in “Legally Blonde," Silas and Jamal head to Harvard (and by Harvard, I mean UCLA, which is where both films were shot). Living by the code of “blunts and booty,” Silas and Jamal smoke and ace their way through the Ivy League school, with Ivory’s help of course. Throughout the film, they play pranks while thwarting Dean Cain’s attempts to get them kicked out of school. Both also find the time to pursue their romantic interests. Ambitious and intelligent Lauren (Lark Voorhies) piques the attention of Silas, and Jamal finds himself smitten with the vice president of the United States’ daughter, bad girl Jamie (Essence Atkins). 

All goes well for Silas and Jamal until someone steals their beloved Ivory plant. And then it’s up to them to figure out how to stay in school in spite of everyone’s expectations for them to fail.

By playing with and flipping around racial stereotypes, the film highlights how easily society makes assumptions based on the color of someone's skin. In a race reversal, a white student grumbles, “This would have never happened if I were black,” after Silas and Jamal gets him kicked out on the first day of class. And in another hilarious scene, Spalding Gray plays a nonsensical white professor who teaches black history, calling upon his black students to leave his class in protest. “Lynch me!” he yells. “Lynch me for what my people have done to your people!”

Some have criticized the film for pushing a “true-to-black” agenda, that anyone black who acts white is immediately branded as a square. Dean Cain, whom Silas and Jamal describe as black “like a polar bear,” becomes a caricature of the black man who rejects his community. Likewise, Lauren is initially portrayed as stuck-up, having been acclimated to highbrow white culture since childhood. But it’s through the joint act of smoking weed that both characters showcase their inner funk and become truer versions of themselves. Rather than be what society expects them to be, they can finally be themselves.

The film doesn’t just target “white” culture though. No one is off-limits during the film’s racial humor, not even the lead pot-smoking pair. 

Method Man and Redman — á la Cheech & Chong — must figure out how to adapt their ghetto selves to succeed. Everyone expects little of the two from the very beginning, and both Silas and Jamal open themselves to a barrage of racial epithets. The two show that a helping hand — even if it’s a cannibis-induced hand of a ghost — can go a long way in shoving the doubts of skeptics right back in their faces.  

"How High" depends on the rhythms and rhymes of its two starring rappers not only in the dialogue, but in its music. The film's soundtrack draws from "Blackout!" as well as their independent albums and brings an urban coolness that other weed films just don't have. And other featured songs such as DMX's "Party Up (Up in Here)," Ludacris and Shawnna's "What's Your Fantasy" and Outkast's "B.O.B." are a fun throwback to the party anthems that so many of us grew up on.

It would be easy to dismiss “How High” as just another stoner movie, but that would be a disservice to the film’s social commentary on race relations, class differences and the nature of the country’s education system. There’s been talk since 2008 of a “How High” sequel. But as of last April, Method Man was skeptical that Universal Pictures, which owns the rights to the film and its characters, would ever produce it. It’s a shame, considering how the 2001 film has endured to become a cult classic. Thirteen years since its release, “How High” still resonates today, especially given America’s recent push to legalize marijuana.

That’s not to say the film doesn’t have its raunchy moments. A dug-up corpse, the ghost of Benjamin Franklin and a little projectile vomiting all find their places in the comedy. But “How High” is a film that everyone can enjoy, high or not.