Homegrown (1998)

Life is good for Jack, Carter and Harlan, three inept ne'r-do-wells who help run master dope-grower Malcoms flourishing marijuana plantation somewhere in northern California. But then Malcom is suddenly bumped off by a mysterious assailant, after a moment of panic, the naive trio decide to take over the business themselves. However, their lazy days on the dope farm have ill prepared them for the high-stakes game of finding buyers for millions of dollars of contraband. As they plunge into a shadowy new world of duplicity, double-dealing and danger, they soon find that they have gotten in way, way over their heads. But driven on by increasing greed and paranoia, it's too late to back out.  

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Review By Mick LaSalle

"Homegrown" is a little caper movie about a trio of marijuana growers from Northern California who are forced to free-lance when their boss is gunned down. They pick the crop, process it, bag it and sell it to big-time wholesalers. Along the way, they get stoned and they get shot at. They keep busy. 

 

Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, the picture is a strictly low-budget affair. The cost-cutting is most obvious in Trevor Rabin's score, which peppers virtually every moment of screen time with drum machines, rock songs and crashing chords, creating the sense that the actors are there solely to reinforce a point that the music is making. 
Billy Bob Thornton, Hank Azaria and Ryan Phillippe play the hapless trio, and Kelly Lynch is the love interest. The movie's aim is that we should see the three buddies as lovable bumblers, but they come across as seedy. Still, the plot, which brings in local growers, thieving competitors and the Mafia, is brisk enough to hold interest in a superficial way.
The director's background in more A-list features ("Losing Isaiah," "A Dangerous Woman") shows in the number of famous faces in cameo roles: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judge Reinhold, John Lithgow and, best of all, Ted Danson as an affablebut psychotic mobster.