By Linda Winsh-Bolard
The pivotal moment of this film comes when Dale suddenly expresses one whole thought: Dude, we are not functioning very well when we are stoned, which is all the time.
It is very hard to find another thought worth of noticing in the entire rest of the film.
Two potheads, drug dealer Saul (James Franco) and process server Dale (Seth Rogen), get into complicated and bloody trouble when Dale witnesses a commando style murder committed by a policewoman and her male companion. Still dazed by the quality of Pineapple express pot he is smoking, Dale went to serve a summons on Ted Jones (Gary Cole), with no suspicion that this is the very same man who supplies Saul with the drug. In his anguish after the shooting, Dale drops his roach, the very same roach he just got from the only dealer in Pineapple express in town- Saul.
Naturally the bad guys figure out rather fast, by sampling the smoke, who these two are, who is their middleman Red and who are their families and friends. Since all three our guys are immortal, the bad guys start to suspect that they are well-trained assassins of the competing Asian drug cartel. The usual chases, shoots, mistakes, runs etc issue.
In the subplot, Dale has a girl friend, Angie (Amber Heard), still in high school, he goes steady with and chastely unless she is of age, which remains unclear. The baddies interfere with his immature relationship as well. Saul supports his Grandma in a retirement home; again baddies find her.
There is a big ball of fire at the end. Otherwise, all the fire is missing from the film.
You’d love the movie if a spun on one sentence of such immense intellectual quality as: the battery is dead, makes you happy. It takes over a minute to conclude the joke. Also if you admire movies full of embarrassingly silly, awkward guys who still live through all of it. Ad to it the usual Apatow film emotional immaturity, puking, fear, poor verbal communication and crude sex desires all enveloped in a cloud of marijuana.
There are some funny scenes: the forest, where the stoned Dale and Saul spend a night while hiding form the killers, the family dinner with Angie’s parents that Dale attends smelling like a dumpster and that ends in a shootout, real as well as verbal. But despite all directorial efforts the story is so thin that it makes the director, David Gordon Green (George Washington, Undertow), seem like a giant just for spinning it into one whole movie. It also appears that Apatow’s trademark, a penis in every film, was watered down to a finger. Inevitable progress is encroaching.
Rest assured, it is not about a viable idea, it is about verbal skits aided by violence as silly as useless. If this is your cup of tea, it will be overflowing.
Rosie Perez is Carol, the cop who went bad, and she dies a horrible death, as do many others. I expect, she might have enjoyed her part of a tough bad woman; she was certainly good. I’d love to write that Seth Rogan and James Franco were also very good, they were certainly in character, but I do wonder how much acting went into their parts; in all their movies they play the same parts.
Directed by David Gordon Green , Screenplay by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, Produced by Judd Apatow, Camera: Tim Orr, Sound: Chris Gebert, With: Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny R. McBride, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez, Amber Heard.
