Review: '4x20: Quick Hits' spotlights trailblazers and moments in pot history

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For disputed reasons, April 20, abbreviated to 420, has become a day to celebrate marijuana; even if this is nothing you mark on your calendar, the collective culture is bound to remind you.Weed is not what it used to be, which is to say illegal everywhere.(State laws may differ, but the federal government still disapproves.) Stoners are no longer useful as a comedy device, while pot’s countercultural meaning has dissipated as it’s been absorbed into the mainstream.

According to the CDC, some 60 million American reported using it in 2022.Snoop Dogg is a beloved media figure (and, somehow, an Olympics commentator).

Seth Rogen co-owns a cannabis company, Houseplant, that also sells coffee, furniture and incense.The paper you are reading has published weed-themed gift guides.Now, Hulu, wholly owned by the Walt Disney Company, is marking the day (Monday) with “4x20: Quick Hits,” a frisky anthology comprising four 20-minute documentaries on pot-related subjects, with family-friendly figure Jimmy Kimmel as an executive producer.

It’s less about the drug itself than the arts, crafts and enterprises it has inspired.Given where we are now, it’s not surprising that there’s a historical bent to the films, a look back to earlier times — certainly worse for some of the people profiled, who were targeted by and battled with the law in pursuit of their businesses and dreams — but one they regard with a kind of amused nostalgia.All the films are affectionate, most are light-hearted and often comical.

One, Todd Kapostasy’s “Bong Voyage,” about the rise and fall and rise of artisanal glassblower Jason Harris, is narrated by one of his creations and includes such dumb puns as “fine piece of glass.” Directed by Brent Hodge, “Highly Unlikely” is an entertaining, straightforward reminiscence of the making of “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” though it is ...