“Pineapple Express” knows precisely what we want to see Seth Rogen doing on screen - swapping punches with a cold-blooded killer.
Confused? Join the crowd.
“Pineapple Express,” from the Judd Apatow assembly line, seriously misjudges its star’s lumpy appeal and the limits of our comedic tolerance. Rather than whip up a stoner comedy worthy of Cheech and Kumar, it devolves into a shoot ‘em up that would make Quentin Tarantino blush.
Yet neither the stoner antics or the ultra-violence save the film.
Rogen stars as a process server named Dale who lives to light up. One day he witnesses a murder while staking out a client and flees the scene, leaving a stash of one-of-a-kind pot behind.
He scrambles to see his dealer, Saul (a moist-eyed James Franco), because he fears the killers are tracking him and his unique purchase.
What comes next is alternately amusing and dull, but feel free to add a star if you’re under any influence - a rule that applies to non-stoner movies, I suppose.
Franco, casting aside his good looks and bland body of work, steals what’s worth stealing here. Rogen wears out his welcome by mid-film, though, precisely when the “Express” heads into “Rambo” territory.
Why a stoner comedy must become a Tarantino-style blowout mystifies me. The film’s tone, a tapestry of ill-fitting moods, takes a final turn for the bizarre in the last 20 minutes. Bullets fly, cars crash into buildings and we’re left with the wreckage of what might have been a serviceable comedy.
“PIneapple Express” wants to have it every which way. It celebrates getting high, until a key character makes a speech about how much trouble being stoned has caused. At one point, Saul sells pot to some pre-teenagers, a throwaway moment that’s as irresponsible as it is unfunny.
And the film could easily be trimmed by 20 minutes without losing a beat.
“PIneapple Express” should have been summer’s last hurrah, a film combining Apatow’s comic instincts with the venerable stoner genre. Instead, it left me anything but high.
FURTHER READING: I take critics to task for their annoying groupthink regarding the film and ask if stoner comedies age worse than traditional ones.
(Photo: Seth Rogen and James Franco are on the run from killers in “Pineapple Express”)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
chase 08.06.08 at 8:55 pm
that about sums it up for me….
movie buff 08.31.08 at 6:38 am
first half of Pineapple Express was about half as good as Knocked Up; the second half was almost as bad as Freddy Got Fingered
cftoto 08.31.08 at 6:47 am
Well put, Movie Buff. You echoed my sentiments in about 500 less words!