Bogart some other joint

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (2008)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Maybe if I had laughed more than I had in the first twenty minutes, I might have given "Pineapple Express" more than a pass. But after twenty minutes of spontaneous chatter about marijuana, the show "227" and some high-school theatrics, "Pineapple Express" becomes a depressingly and distressingly moronic and monotonous time-waster.

Seth Rogen is Dale, a process server who wears various disguises to deliver subpoenas. Dale loves to smoke weed and buys it from a drug dealer named Saul (James Franco), whose very existence is on being an intercontinental expert on weed. Oh, yes, Saul loves to smoke too, especially a type of weed called "Pineapple Express," the kind of weed that smells like "God's vagina" and smoking it is the equivalent of killing a unicorn. These types of absurd metaphoric lines are what makes "Pineapple Express" special at first - a sort of "Harold and Kumar" or Cheech and Chong stoked on an absurd, nirvana high. These scenes give the movie a special lively kick of zonked-out humor played with a certain level of restraint. Seth and Franco seem relaxed, confident, and stoned.

But then Dale witnesses a murder at Ted Jones' house - Ted Jones (Gary Cole) is supposed to be served with one of Dale's subpoenas but that can obviously wait. Jones also buys weed from Saul, especially the pineapple express which no one else outside of Ted or Saul smoke. Yes, Dale smokes some, and throws it out the window when he sees the shooting. A drug war starts between the Asian crime syndicate (do not ask) and Ted Jones and his band of incompetent hit men. They are looking for Dale, whom they mistake as Asian. Rosie Perez pops up as a crooked cop who participated in the murder. We get car chases, brutal beatings, shootings, burnings, crushed bodies, and a poor soul named Red (Danny R. McBride) who is shot several times but manages to survive, ready for battle. Then there is Dale's high-school girlfriend and Ed Begley, Jr. as the girl's father and more confusion inside suburbia, and the movie rambles on and on.

Unfortunately, precious little of this is funny. "Pineapple Express" automatically thinks that such a wayward, formulaic plot is funny, but it is nothing more than a toked remake of "True Romance" (Franco's stoned character is based on Brad Pitt's stoner in "True Romance"). In fact, director David Gordon Green amps up the violence to such a degree that you might think you stepped into a high-octane action picture. Tarantino could handle this sort of thing with flair and comic timing yet "Pineapple Express" becomes grossly overdone and thrusts on overkill with a huge body count. I won't say it rivals a Rambo picture but there are more killings than in "Pulp Fiction." There is a solidly hilarious car chase involving two police cars and Saul's leg stuck through the windshield. Unfortunately, there aren't enough of these wild, frantic visual gags as such. Compared to the Coens' classic stoner comedy, "The Big Lebowski," itself a stoned noir comedy that gradually loses interest in its own plot, "Pineapple Express" falls quite precipitously by comparison.

Seth Rogen is smartly cast and has a good rapport with James Franco - they have their bromance that actually works. Their early scenes at Saul's apartment or their endless chatter when stuck in the middle of the woods are witty and pungent. The rest of the movie just wallows in hysteria and drawn-out gunfire and repetitive stabbings, beatings, slashings, immolation, etc. It just leaves a nasty aftertaste for the alleged stoner comedy of the first twenty minutes. It needed more of "The Big Lebowski" stoned flavor to really be (s)toked.