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#636 - Pineapple Express
David Gordon Green, 2008
A slacker witnesses a murder and must go on the run with his drug dealer.
Pineapple Express definitely seems like a film that I should like in theory but struggle to appreciate in practice. After a prologue set during the 1950s in a top-secret research facility dedicated to studying marijuana, it cuts to the modern day where a twenty-something process server (Seth Rogen) is about to contact the latest person (Gary Cole) on his list, only to see Cole and a police officer (Rosie Perez) murder an Asian man. He speeds off in horror, but soon realises that he left behind a joint made of a rare type of weed that can easily be traced back to him through his dealer (James Franco), so of course it leads to both Rogen and Franco going on the run and trying to find a solution to their problems. Much like Superbad (which was also written by Rogen and frequent writing collaborator Evan Goldberg), this results in a film that has an admittedly interesting premise but is undone by a variety of factors, especially the individuals involved in the production. I think if I watch a movie and find myself thinking "what if _______ had written/directed/starred in this instead" then that's a pretty significant problem, and Pineapple Express has that in spades.
For starters, it's a bit too long. I've noted that films featuring Judd Apatow's involvement to one extent or another tend to be a little too long for their own good and Pineapple Express is no exception in that regard. It's mainly because there are a few sub-plots that don't go anywhere, the most prominent of which is Rogen's character's tenuous relationship with a high-school student (Amber Heard), which chews up a lot of time and doesn't yield a lot of amusement in the process (except maybe when one of her parents stabs Franco with a fork...don't worry, it makes sense in context). The same extends to the entire first act, which always feels like a chore to get through. Despite the emphasis on stoner comedy and the typical Apatow brand of semi-improvised conversational humour, I honestly think this film's a lot better when it opts to focus on its action-parody comedy. It hits a few of the expected action beats - a fistfight here, a car chase there - and I would genuinely like it a lot more if it cut down on the more extraneous excuses for comedy and focused on that kind of thing. Of course, you still have to sit through a lot of odd-couple comedy as Rogen's relative straight-man must contend with the fact that he's more or less stuck with Franco's overly friendly and incompetent dealer, who Rogen sees less as a friend than as a necessary evil when it comes to acquiring weed. Various other performers, such as Danny McBride as an associate of Franco's or Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson as a pair of relentless hitmen, do what they can with the material but it never quite feels like enough.
Though I've given it more than one chance to truly impress me, Pineapple Express still feels like an aggressively mediocre waste of a truly promising narrative concept. It's still got some laughs, but their distribution across a two-hour film is a bit too haphazard to guarantee that this is a truly worthwhile comedic experience. It's a shame, because there are some inventive twists on existing action-movie clichés (most notably Franco's attempt to kick out a damaged windshield during a car chase). Of course, some of them just keep falling flat (such as McBride's ability to take a seemingly endless amount of fatal-looking punishments across the course of the movie), and that's without mentioning the stuff that doesn't go anywhere (case in point - everything involving Heard's character). The sheer amount of wasted potential on display is just so frustrating that I've managed to watch this movie multiple times and still can't feel like I honestly enjoy it, which is a problem when it's a fairly straightforward comedy. To be fair, it gets enough laughs to stop me from thinking that I can truly hate it, but that's not enough to significantly redeem it.
David Gordon Green, 2008
A slacker witnesses a murder and must go on the run with his drug dealer.
Pineapple Express definitely seems like a film that I should like in theory but struggle to appreciate in practice. After a prologue set during the 1950s in a top-secret research facility dedicated to studying marijuana, it cuts to the modern day where a twenty-something process server (Seth Rogen) is about to contact the latest person (Gary Cole) on his list, only to see Cole and a police officer (Rosie Perez) murder an Asian man. He speeds off in horror, but soon realises that he left behind a joint made of a rare type of weed that can easily be traced back to him through his dealer (James Franco), so of course it leads to both Rogen and Franco going on the run and trying to find a solution to their problems. Much like Superbad (which was also written by Rogen and frequent writing collaborator Evan Goldberg), this results in a film that has an admittedly interesting premise but is undone by a variety of factors, especially the individuals involved in the production. I think if I watch a movie and find myself thinking "what if _______ had written/directed/starred in this instead" then that's a pretty significant problem, and Pineapple Express has that in spades.
For starters, it's a bit too long. I've noted that films featuring Judd Apatow's involvement to one extent or another tend to be a little too long for their own good and Pineapple Express is no exception in that regard. It's mainly because there are a few sub-plots that don't go anywhere, the most prominent of which is Rogen's character's tenuous relationship with a high-school student (Amber Heard), which chews up a lot of time and doesn't yield a lot of amusement in the process (except maybe when one of her parents stabs Franco with a fork...don't worry, it makes sense in context). The same extends to the entire first act, which always feels like a chore to get through. Despite the emphasis on stoner comedy and the typical Apatow brand of semi-improvised conversational humour, I honestly think this film's a lot better when it opts to focus on its action-parody comedy. It hits a few of the expected action beats - a fistfight here, a car chase there - and I would genuinely like it a lot more if it cut down on the more extraneous excuses for comedy and focused on that kind of thing. Of course, you still have to sit through a lot of odd-couple comedy as Rogen's relative straight-man must contend with the fact that he's more or less stuck with Franco's overly friendly and incompetent dealer, who Rogen sees less as a friend than as a necessary evil when it comes to acquiring weed. Various other performers, such as Danny McBride as an associate of Franco's or Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson as a pair of relentless hitmen, do what they can with the material but it never quite feels like enough.
Though I've given it more than one chance to truly impress me, Pineapple Express still feels like an aggressively mediocre waste of a truly promising narrative concept. It's still got some laughs, but their distribution across a two-hour film is a bit too haphazard to guarantee that this is a truly worthwhile comedic experience. It's a shame, because there are some inventive twists on existing action-movie clichés (most notably Franco's attempt to kick out a damaged windshield during a car chase). Of course, some of them just keep falling flat (such as McBride's ability to take a seemingly endless amount of fatal-looking punishments across the course of the movie), and that's without mentioning the stuff that doesn't go anywhere (case in point - everything involving Heard's character). The sheer amount of wasted potential on display is just so frustrating that I've managed to watch this movie multiple times and still can't feel like I honestly enjoy it, which is a problem when it's a fairly straightforward comedy. To be fair, it gets enough laughs to stop me from thinking that I can truly hate it, but that's not enough to significantly redeem it.