FUNNY 'GRASS' TAKES THE HIGH ROAD

MOVIE REVIEW-3 1/2 STARS-GRASS. Hilarious, infuriating and persuasive, Ron
Mann's documentary chronicling American law enforcement's obsessive crusade
against marijuana is also a trenchant dissection of pop culture's more
abusive effects. Narrated by Woody Harrelson. 1:20. For two weeks at the
Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., Manhattan.

'GRASS" IS "J'Accuse" that kicks like a vintage rhythm-and-blues record. To
deploy a carny-barker alliteration, it is a fast, funny and ferocious
polemic that advances the cause of drug law reform by simply showing the
absurd extremes through which those in authority have come down hard on the
humble cannabis plant and those who use it to relax.

Which, according to Ron Mann's documentary, is all that marijuana was
perceived to be good for a mere century ago, when Mexican farm workers
smoked it to unwind from a hard day in the fields.

Somehow, a welter of anti-immigrant prejudice, post-Prohibition fervor and
unchecked righteousness transmogrified this homely little weed into Satan's
prized houseplant, a treacherous substance capable of turning unsuspecting
users into homicidal maniacs, heroin addicts and progressive politicians.

The chief architect of this paranoia - and the presiding dark angel of the
mad, sad story of "Grass" - is Harry J. Anslinger, who in the 1930s became
America's first de facto drug czar as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics'
top cop.

Anslinger, as shamelessly media savvy as his FBI counterpart, J. Edgar
Hoover, managed through sheer force of will to convince lawmakers and plain
folks from sea to shining sea that marijuana was a menace to public health.

There would be counterarguments as far back as 1944, when a medical
commission appointed by New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia marshaled
considerable evidence showing marijuana's effects to be relatively benign.
But by that time, movies like 1936's "Reefer Madness" (whose now-campy
outrages are lovingly excerpted here) had, with Anslinger's help, rendered
any rational examination of the issue into insignificance.

Mann, whose 1991 documentary "The Twist" showed a comparably droll
shrewdness toward the vagaries of pop culture, is adept at maneuvering the
egregious ironies dominating the decades-long push-me pull-you debate over
marijuana, which becomes a funhouse mirror reflection of the socio-political
upheaval of mid-20th- Century America.

46or instance, clips from 1950s educational films with wild-eyed
high-school kids drinking from broken bottles because of marijuana use are
placed in the wider context of Cold War politics.

It's all pretty funny except when the toll for this popularly enforced
hysteria is assessed in billions of federal dollars and the jail time
imposed achieves critical mass.

Beneath its jaunty satire, the film does a fairly credible job chronicling
the ups and downs of antipot hysteria through the "Just Say No" 1980s. You
wonder, though, how a film this conscientiously ironic forgot to mention the
disqualification of Republican Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsberg over
his youthful dalliances with pot. Or, for that matter, First Boomer Bill
Clinton's indelibly disingenuous confession that he smoked "but did not
inhale" marijuana.

But by the end, "Grass" has stopped having fun and is intent on making a
direct plea for reform. The film makes its points so trenchantly that you're
left wondering just what could be rationally argued in rebuttal.