Review

I Ain’t High Enough Yet (2025)

Written and directed by Terrell Matheny. With Avelina Alvarez, Albert Cannon, and DanTee Major. USAnia, comedy, 2025, 1:08:56, colour.

Two stoners, Jesse and Malibu, move to Colorado to fulfill their dreams of running their own Weed dispensary. But their new venture is threatened by the town’s Queen Pin and her gang.

IMDb   •   Watch full movie above or on YouTube

Reviewed by TLB
Posted June 12, 2025

It’s no secret to those who know me that I’m a big fan of creators who make movies independently.

I won’t support you with my resources any longer, beyond buying a copy of your work, because A) Hey, you don’t need my support any more; you probably won’t even miss it; and B) That’s not what my mission as a Minor Mogul is about; you’re obviously doing well on your own mission.

Let’s look at the thumbnail image on YouTube:

Hmm . . . do you think Terrell Matheny had something to do with this movie?

I count six mentions of his name in this one image, including the logo on the character’s jacket in the lower left and the logo overlay in the lower right. That’s not a good sign. We want to present ourselves honestly, and we Minor Moguls who make movies independently often find ourselves wearing multiple hats on a project. But putting your own name on the poster over and over again smacks of an unbecoming egotism. (And the credits block really should put the title all on one line. And perhaps include the Writer of the movie.)

We meet our hero as he smokes a joint in the alley outside his workplace. He works as a dishwasher at a fried-chicken restaurant, and decides that he’s had enough of his current life. He’s going to move to Colorado and open his own Weed dispensary.

Meeting our hero at a moment of crisis is good dramatically. We’re joining the story sort of in media res, as they say. The movie might have spent some time establishing our hero’s “normal”: the daily frustrations and humiliations he has to negotiate just to get through life — the things that spur him to make a major change. Here we don’t know anything about him; he’s the only character onscreen until he makes his decision. He’s more or less a blank slate to us; we don’t know anything about him or his situation.

That’s an interesting creative decision — but I don’t know that it was the right one. He makes his decision back outside in the alley, where he eats some deep-fried chicken parts. The scene inside the restaurant, where he washes a tray of dishes and fries the chicken, don’t really add anything to the movie.

Perhaps we might have opened with a montage of him at work. Dishwashing is a never-ending job, where your only reward for working harder and faster is . . . more work; it would be easy to portray this as soul-crushing. And the credits could play over it, so TM could see his name onscreen a few times. Then, after his shift, he steps into the alley to eat a quick meal and smoke a quick joint. By the time he decides, “Fuck this shit,” we’re with him and ready to go.

It’s an extraordinary thing to do: upend your life and move to another part of the world to open your own business. Every part of that is a huge risk. So our character is a risk-taker, an adventurer, a guy who acts and makes things happen. That’s good in a protagonist. And it’s good in a movie: we get the dramatic premise established right away.

We can imagine what challenges and opposition he might face: he has to amass resources (if he’s working as a dishwasher, he’s probably not independently wealthy), he has to travel to Colorado (road trip!), he has to set up a business (frustrations with permitting, suppliers, advertising, etc.), he has to compete with established businesses in the area (perhaps even confronting a violent gangster in Act III). Our hero has a clear goal he wants to achieve, and antagonistic forces are arrayed against him. We can see how the movie might go . . .

Beginning the story in media res like this, we know nothing about our protagonist. Does he have the means and dedication to actually pull off a plan like this, or is he a just a stoner slacker with big dreams and no self-discipline? We can find this out as he moves through his circle of friends in Act I, calling in every favour he’s owed. We see him as a go-getter, and come to believe that he can do this thing.

That takes us to the Plot Point at the end of Act I, when our heroes actually hit the road. We spend the first half of Act II on fun and games as our heroes drive across the country and meet picturesque characters and refine their plan.

At the Mid-Point, our heroes arrive in Colorado. They spend the second half of Act II setting up their dispensary: finding premises, negotiating with suppliers, advertising the shop, acquiring customers. There can be a hint of threat: as our heroes start succeeding, the new shop draws attention from big-player gangsters in the Colorado grey-market Weed business.

These gangsters manage to shut down the shop at the Plot Point at the end of Act II. Oh noes! But our heroes spend Act III rallying, and come back to defeat the gangsters and re-establish the dispensary. Ideally, this will mean that our hero has to confront exactly the character flaw he demonstrated in Act I — the flaw that has always kept him from success in the past. Thus the movie shows our hero growing and maturing as a person. We fade out as they spark up a celebratory doobie. The end.

Let’s go through the movie, and see how good a prognosticator I am.