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I haven't always been a fan of Aptow films, 40 Year Old Virgin, and I wasn't so sure about this one as pot jokes can become pretty old pretty quickly, but this film works it perfectly. It blends pot jokes with a buddy film story and it is very humorous with a show stealing performance.
The biggest thing that I noted in this film is the performance by James Franco. He plays a drug dealer named Saul, and he plays it perfectly. His acting stones is much better then in Strange Wilderness and basically anything that he says or does is just hilarious. Seth Rogen plays the lead, but his character ends up being secondary in the humor in the film. He does a decent job, but Franco is just the amazing in his character. Danny McBride also steals some of the humor from Rogen in the film. McBride isn't as big a character as either Franco or Rogen's, so there is a lot of screen time without him, but for the most part he does a very good job in the time he has on the screen.
The story works out very well as well. Like I said in the intro, it isn't so much a pot comedy as it is a buddy film with pot as the contecting ingrediant for the buddies. In many ways it reminded me of Hot Fuzz where it takes another genre, pot or action films, and then makes a buddy film out of it. This allowed them to have a wider variety of jokes then purely making jokes about how stoned people are, etc. that generally go along with stoner films. The story stays very random in everything that it does, it can jump from one thing to another, but it doesn't lose track of the story, most everything progresses the story somehow. Seth Rogen's girlfriend in the film is a little bit out there, there isn't any real need for her, but she works in the film. They drop her from the story when it really doesn't matter anymore, and they drop her very well.
Visually this film was very solid. It had some pretty random cuts with just the fades and various cross cuts that they used. It worked well enough in that the odd ones were generally used for major cuts between time periods or even thoughts. It was a little interesting in the editing of the film for that reason, but nothing really detracted from what was going on the screen. It was basically just a fleeting thought that went along the lines of: "That isn't something you normally see."
Overall this is a good comedy film. It doesn't use overdone jokes to get its laughs and it doesn't only use pot jokes to make people laugh. This variety makes it a better comedy then a lot that have some out and even those that have some out that are R rated, see Semi-Pro.
Overall Grade: B+
Story: A-
Acting: B+
Audio/Visual: B
I haven't always been a fan of Aptow films, 40 Year Old Virgin, and I wasn't so sure about this one as pot jokes can become pretty old pretty quickly, but this film works it perfectly. It blends pot jokes with a buddy film story and it is very humorous with a show stealing performance.
The biggest thing that I noted in this film is the performance by James Franco. He plays a drug dealer named Saul, and he plays it perfectly. His acting stones is much better then in Strange Wilderness and basically anything that he says or does is just hilarious. Seth Rogen plays the lead, but his character ends up being secondary in the humor in the film. He does a decent job, but Franco is just the amazing in his character. Danny McBride also steals some of the humor from Rogen in the film. McBride isn't as big a character as either Franco or Rogen's, so there is a lot of screen time without him, but for the most part he does a very good job in the time he has on the screen.
The story works out very well as well. Like I said in the intro, it isn't so much a pot comedy as it is a buddy film with pot as the contecting ingrediant for the buddies. In many ways it reminded me of Hot Fuzz where it takes another genre, pot or action films, and then makes a buddy film out of it. This allowed them to have a wider variety of jokes then purely making jokes about how stoned people are, etc. that generally go along with stoner films. The story stays very random in everything that it does, it can jump from one thing to another, but it doesn't lose track of the story, most everything progresses the story somehow. Seth Rogen's girlfriend in the film is a little bit out there, there isn't any real need for her, but she works in the film. They drop her from the story when it really doesn't matter anymore, and they drop her very well.
Visually this film was very solid. It had some pretty random cuts with just the fades and various cross cuts that they used. It worked well enough in that the odd ones were generally used for major cuts between time periods or even thoughts. It was a little interesting in the editing of the film for that reason, but nothing really detracted from what was going on the screen. It was basically just a fleeting thought that went along the lines of: "That isn't something you normally see."
Overall this is a good comedy film. It doesn't use overdone jokes to get its laughs and it doesn't only use pot jokes to make people laugh. This variety makes it a better comedy then a lot that have some out and even those that have some out that are R rated, see Semi-Pro.
Overall Grade: B+
Story: A-
Acting: B+
Audio/Visual: B