John Stalberg Jr."s "High School," With Adrien Brody One accomplishment of the stoner comedy "High School," although I'm not sure "accomplishment" is the right term, is to evoke a state of drugged stupefaction in which the connections between words are lost, and nothing makes sense. Time slows to a crawl as disoriented faculty members at Morgan High School keep mumbling "what" between indeterminate pauses. A half-forgotten Grateful Dead concert from decades earlier is suddenly remembered as if it were yesterday. One usually proper teacher babbles to her students about her kinky sexual fantasies involving the Canadian rocker Bryan Adams. Their minds have been sabotaged by tainted brownies sold at a school bake sale. At the last second the original sweets were replaced with a batch laced with concentrated THC. An ad line for the movie says it "puts the high back into high school," but that doesn't do justice to the mostly benign freakout when the school loses its collective mind. While there are stoner comedies that observe the farcical paranoia of doped-up teenagers from an amused, sympathetic distance, this film, directed by John Stalberg Jr. from a screenplay he wrote with Erik Linthorst and Stephen Susco, observes life from inside and outside the smoke-filled bubble. Masterminding the prank are two schoolmates headed in opposite directions. The slim, nervous Henry Burke (Matt Bush), who is about to be valedictorian, has a full scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All bets about his future are off, however, after his blubbery childhood sidekick, Travis Breaux (Sean Marquette), a downwardly mobile pothead, coaxes him into taking his first toke. These friends have reunited after a chance encounter, and they end up smoking the ganja in a tree house that was once a hangout. Their troubles begin immediately after Henry's initiation, when they learn that the school administration will begin mandatory drug testing of all students the very next day. Anyone testing positive will be expelled. The catalyst for the purge is the embarrassing, drug-addled behavior of the school's spelling champion, who spouts giggly, pot-fueled gibberish at a regional competition. All at once Henry's shining future is imperiled. In the preposterous solution Travis dreams up, the whole school will have to fail the test, along with Henry. Before they whip up a batch of magic brownies, they must steal the secret ingredient from the private stash of Psycho Ed (Adrien Brody), a bearded, heavily tattooed drug dealer who talks to his frog. Mr. Brody gives a funny, wild-man performance as the hyper-paranoid who goes after them once he discovers the theft. True to the genre, the movie has a pompous authority figure in Dr. Leslie Gordon (Michael Chiklis), the headmaster, who is almost a dead ringer for Jeffrey Jones's Ed Rooney in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Speaking in a pseudo-British accent and affecting Shakespearean diction, he is the butt of merciless comic bashing. A lesser villain is Henry's prim sourpuss of a rival for valedictorian, Sebastian Saleem (Adhir Kalyan), who discovers the original brownies in the garbage and threatens to tattle. The most euphoric among the stoned is the assistant dean, Brandon Ellis (Colin Hanks), who finds himself liberated from his bureaucratic straitjacket by the marijuana. Once the plot has sprung into action, "High School" is a bumpy ride that takes a few amusing dives but never coheres into anything special. And the friendship at the center isn't as substantial a bond as that of movie duos like Harold and Kumar. For a film about defiant teenage potheads, there is also remarkably little innuendo. Most of these guys are too high even to think about sex. "High School" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Drug use and strong language. High School Opens on Friday in Manhattan. Directed by John Stalberg Jr.; written by Erik Linthorst, Mr. Stalberg and Stephen Susco, based on a story by Mr. Stalberg and Mr. Linthorst; director of photography, Mitchell Amundsen; edited by Gabriel Wrye; music by the Newton Brothers; production design by Seth Reed; costumes by Marie France; produced by Arcadiy Golubovich, Warren Zide and Raymond J. Markovich; released by Anchor Bay Films. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. WITH: Adrien Brody (Psycho Ed), Sean Marquette (Travis Breaux), Matt Bush (Henry Burke), Colin Hanks (Brandon Ellis), Michael Chiklis (Dr. Leslie Gordon), Adhir Kalyan (Sebastian), Yeardley Smith (Mrs. Unger) and Alicia Sixtos (Sharky Ovante).