‘Rude Awakening’ (R)

Cheech and Not-Chong costar in "Rude Awakening," a stupefyingly idiotic comedy about the way we were vs. the way we are. The '60s meet the '80s, groovin' meets gettin' and tie-dye meets button-down in this bummer directed by Aaron Russo, Bette Midler's former manager.

Cheech Marin and Eric Roberts are Hesus and Fred, two hippies who come back from a 20-year stay in Central America to find that old friends Petra (Julie Hagerty) and Sammy (Robert Carradine) have turned into unprincipled yuppies. My, my. Pursued by the same FBI agent from whom they fled in 1969, they return to New York to expose U.S. plans to invade Central America. Petra, once a flaky flower child, has become a neurotic high-fashion designer who terrorizes underlings and secretly gorges on pizza and Popeye's. Then the sweet-natured innocents arrive, smoking joints and giving the peace sign. She gives them a cold reception, but after taking a toke and sleeping with Fred, Petra is, like, wow again. Sammy, who aspired to writing revolutionary pamphlets, is now the owner of a chain of tanning salons. "How do you get the sun to shine just on the people who pay you, man?" asks the childlike Hesus, whose brains were scrambled in a military experiment with LSD. Fred, Hesus and Petra ask Sammy to hide them from G-men but are rebuffed by Sammy under pressure from his prim wife, June (Cindy Williams). "We need, we need, we need more," says June, the voice of debauched consumerism.

Based on a sound comic premise, "Rude Awakening" is a calamity of wasted potential and a lost forum for environmental and social issues. The heroes are shocked to find not a whole earth tended by committed, beatific individuals, but New Coke, ozone layer depletion, acid rain and homelessness.

Boasting the superiority of '60s sensibilities, screenwriters Neil Levy and Richard LaGravenese are like parents immemorial, shaking their fingers at "these kids today." And where do Levy, LaGravenese and first-time director Russo get their nerve? How can they criticize crack use when their heroes not only smoke, but celebrate, dope? Make love, not movies, dudes.