Chong does his time (nine months) and has the last laugh, emerging as a born-again activist-survivor of the culture wars.

Tells the depressing, often ridiculous and generally enraging story of how and why Mr. Chong, an extremely laid-back and genial camera presence, ended up doing time in the minimum-security Taft Correctional Institution in Taft, Calif.

How the feds inadvertently resurrected the performing career of stoner comic Tommy Chong by busting him is the ironic subtext of Josh Gilbert's one-sided documentary a/k/a Tommy Chong.

Gilbert films Chong as if he's a political prisoner like Nelson Mandela, when he's really just an older comic going to jail over a bad business decision.

Gilbert blatantly takes Chong's side, so your level of empathy will rise or fall depending on how strongly you connect with his subject's hazy, if enthusiastic, dedication to "the pursuit of righteous happiness."