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If you are looking for a film that is absolutely ridiculous but totally hilarious, you can’t go wrong from watching ‘Pineapple Express’, which stars Seth Rogen and James Franco. If you saw ‘cult classics’ such as ‘Half Baked’ with Dave Chappelle, ‘How High’ with Method Man and Redman, and more recently ‘Harold and Kumar’ and its sequel, and you enjoyed those films, then somewhere in your mind you will be adding this film either on top or behind the list. One guy doesn’t make the film a success, and as you can see with these films, it takes a team effort to make a comedy work, and with Rogen and Franco, co-stars on Producer Apatow's short-lived TV series, ‘Freaks and Geeks’, their banter and scenes just seemed natural.
Lazy stoner Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) has only one reason to visit his equally lazy dealer Saul Silver (James Franco): to purchase weed, specifically, a rare new strain called Pineapple Express. But when Dale becomes the only witness to a murder by a crooked cop (Rosie Perez) and the city's most dangerous drug lord (Gary Cole), he panics and dumps his roach of Pineapple Express at the scene. Dale now has another reason to visit Saul: to find out if the weed is so rare that it can be traced back to him. And it is. As Dale and Saul run for their lives, they quickly discover that they're not suffering from weed-fueled paranoia; incredibly, the bad guys really are hot on their trail and trying to figure out the fastest way to kill them both. All aboard the Pineapple Express.
The best parts of the film are the not the endless chase scenes but the chemistry between the two leads, as well as performances given by Craig Robinson (from NBC’s The Office) and Danny McBride. I have never watched ‘Office Space’, but Robinson certainly has a future on the big screen when his time on the show is up. There have been dinner table scenes that have stood out from other films like in ‘Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?’ but the scene with Ed Begley Jr, playing the father of Dale’s girlfriend and what happens when Dale comes late to meet them is one to remember. It’s nice to see Rosie Perez back in the game. Her role is not much as in her previous films, but she adds in her funny bones to the mix. The last act of the film may have been a bit much in terms of the one-too-many shootouts scenes, but by that point who cares. Who knew that mixing violence and comedy could turn out to be a good thing. With lots of action, comedy, and drugs, ‘Pineapple Express’ has it all and you don’t have to be stoned to enjoy it.
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August 2008
