Pineapple Express Delivers Puffs of Brilliance without Being a Total Drag

By Adam Pope August 21, 2008 Issue

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the minds that brought us Superbad, team up again to take a shot at reinventing the stoner comedy with their latest effort, Pineapple Express. Since no Rogen and Judd Apatow—he produced this one—effort would be complete without adult males acting like children, the protagonists in this “high” comedy are 25-year-old pot-smoking process server Rogen and his thoroughly mellowed drug dealer James Franco, best known for his brooding role in the Spider-Man franchise. The two deliver essentially the same experience as the boys from Superbad only aged 10 years, given mass amounts of illegal drugs, and given the added motivation of running for their lives to attempt to kill their buzz—unsuccessfully, I might add.

Things seem to be going a little stagnant for Dale (Rogen) as he attempts to coordinate all of the epic events in his life: juggling a relationship with a high-school girl, donning different disguises in order to serve as many subpoenas as possible, and, of course, smoking ridiculous amounts of marijuana every single day. His supplier in this last activity is Saul (Franco) whose high-impact lifestyle of smoking and selling weed has caused him to feel a bit alienated from the outside world. Saul introduces Dale to Pineapple Express, a new transcendent form of pot that only he is able to supply.

After an extending scene at Saul’s apartment—which succeeds amply in making the audience attuned to the duo’s ability to function at drug content levels that should be lethal—Dale drives out to serve drug mogul Ted Jones (Gary Cole) and his butch police woman lackey (Rosie Perez) executing an Asian drug dealer in a rival cartel. Dale speeds off into the distance, after a painfully long scene of slamming back in forth between two cars, one of which is Perez’s police cruiser, dropping a roach that Jones instantly recognizes as Pineapple Express. This last leads them on the path to Saul and Dale, causing the duo to begin a game of cat-and-mouse for their survival culminating in a Scarface-like shootout in the largest pot factory ever captured on film.

Seth Rogen once again demonstrates an ability to capture a role that seems all too natural to him as the heroic underdog Dale who seems to grow increasingly frustrated by the slow grinding wheels of the slacking Saul. Franco, who had previously teamed up with Rogen and Apatow in the short-lived television phenomenon Freaks and Geeks, plays Saul brilliantly. Franco dives headfirst into the role, delivering a performance that is as loopy as Tommy Chong in Amsterdam, yet somehow strangely endearing and heartfelt. The adventure soon becomes more about the emotional journey of Dale and Saul in finding a balance to their friendship through the myriads of pot-filled shenanigans.

Pineapple Express is another solid effort in the somewhat inconsistent career of Judd Apatow. The film reeks of his influence, among other things, and the casting of Rogen and Franco seems to indicate the kind of loyalty to maintaining the same faces on screen that is currently employed by the big wigs at Happy Madison. Though it might not deliver as many laughs per minute as some of the other efforts in the box office right now, Pineapple Express will leave you with a strange feeling to call up your best friend and make sure that you are still as close as ever. And for nachos. Lots of nachos.

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