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Dancing_P [ 8.5 ]
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It somehow all boiled down to this. Lest they be caught in a rut, the Apatow gang decides to turn their usual shtick on its head and deliver both their funniest movie yet and the most cracking action movie of the year. The most inspired coup of the film is handing the reins over to brilliant indie directro David Gordon Green, translating his obsession with 70's cinema to Rogen/Apatow's stoner sense of humor.
Rogen is Dale Denton, a pothead process server who inadvertantly witnesses a gang hit involving The Asians, drug mogul Ted Jones (Gary Cole) and crooked cop Rosie Perez. He attempts to escape but is easily found with his discarded roach which contains a kind of weed (the titular Pineapple Express, natch) that Ted himself has given to only one dealer: doper Saul Silver (James Franco). Dale and Saul find themselves on the run, chased by all kinds of nefarious character who are severely underestimating the power of incompetence.
Beyond the weed humor (which these guys have proven time and time again that they can do), it's a surprisingly brutal and punchy action film. These are not the kinds of dudes you usually see fighting and it plays out accordingly; sloppy punches and eye gougings abound. As gleefully appreciative of the genre as Hot Fuzz, Pineapple Express eschews the broadly referential to something that's more pastiche than parody. It works as an action film and it works as a comedy, neither more than the other.
Chalk that up to Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg's respect of generic elements and generally hilarious writing; it's by far their most ambitious screenplay yet. It also helps that Green's got more visual flair than Apatow or Nicholas Stoller, TV alums who are really just making more expensive TV shows. It's Franco who steals the show, an addled Oscar to Rogen's pothead Felix. It taps into an old-fashioned kind of back-and-forth buddy comedy that isn't done too much these days and was rarely done this well in its heyday.
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Jeff_Wilder [ 9.0 ]
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Now here's an action-comedy. Pineapple Express may be the best film of its type we've had since I don't know when. While The Expendables tried to be a throwback to 80s action films in terms of cast, it didn't catch the spirit of the films its trying to emulate. This one does.
Star/co-writer Seth Rogen does this film right in two ways. First, he pens a script that's legitimately funny and manages to give us some interesting characters. Secondly, he asked indie maestro David Gordon Green to direct.
Green, the writer/director of the character driven dramas George Washington, All The Real Girls, Undertow and Snow Angels might seem like an odd choice for this material. However he turns out to be more than a match for it. Having growm up on the likes of Midnight Run and Beverly Hills Cop he understands what makes these movies work and applies it here.
Trying to think of any criticisms of this movie and I can come up with two. First up, the movie's a tad too long. Shave ten minutes off that ending and it would have been close to perfect as a comedy can get. Second, while it did get Green out of the corner I feared he may have painted himself into with Snow Angels, it also opened the door for him to do commercial pablum like The Sitter. On the two films he did after Pineapple, Green came off as a director for hire. Let's get on to the good stuff Green.
Yet on the whole Pineapple Express is the closest we've came to Midnight Run since Midnight Run. Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it!
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DokBrowne [ 8.5 ]
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Awesome. Although it succeeds in slightly different ways, it's about equal in quality to year's two other Apatow-related success stories, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "Tropic Thunder". Frankly, any movie spearheaded by former "Freaks & Geeks" cast members has a special place reserved in my heart regardless of quality, but the fact that this one practically replicates James Franco's Daniel Desario character wholesale really puts it over the top. He was the best person on that show precisely because of the endearingly flawed guy he played, and while "Express" maybe be more broad and laugh-oriented, it still offers Franco a deliciously nuanced performance in the same mode, and he relishes it. More real characters, less "Spider-Man" and "Annapolis" for this genuine talent. Seth Rogen is fantastic as ever, and needless to say the orbiting cast has you begging for more; from Gary Cole to Rosie Perez, Danny McBride to Ed Begley Jr. (missed you!), Craig Robinson to Kevin Corrigan, Amber Heard to Joe Lo Truglio, this movie never lags no matter who's in the scene. I suppose it is a little more straightforward than other films of its ilk (i.e. some missed opportunities for wackiness here or there), but that's a nebulous complaint at most. Excellent stoner comedy
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jeff_v [ 5.0 ]
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Unless you think anything involving pot is automatically funny, this movie is a drag. The Coen Brothers might have been able to integrate the stoner comedy and crime threads of the plot --here they intermingle uneasily, choking off the laughs and rendering silly and flat the action. Also, is Danny McBride supposed to be funny precisely because he's not funny (this applies to any character of his)?
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.8 |
| No. Ratings | : 8 | |
| No. Reviews | : 4 | |
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