Pineapple Express
What sunk “Step Brothers” in my mind is what is something of a virtue in “Pineapple Express”- vulgarity. There’s a difference, though; where “Step Brothers” was all about one-upping the ante in low-brow humor and mean-spiritedness when it should have been somewhat sweeter, “Pineapple Express” is a kind of sweet story of friendship and loyalty masquerading as a stoner action movie. In the ever-expanding Apatow canon, I’d put it a step above “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”- which didn’t have enough laughs for me- and just a hair ahead of “Superbad,” which was also written by the “Express” team of Eric Goldberg and Seth Rogan, but a couple of steps below the Apatow-directed “Knocked Up” and “The 40 Year-Old Virgin,” both of which found just the right mix of crudeness and heart by keeping the story’s real instead of taking it surreal. I have to say, though, the notion of a “Superbad”/”Pineapple Express” crossover- which has been rumored since the film’s successful Wednesday opening- did get interesting to me.
How to describe this movie succinctly? Let’s just say it involves a drug-war murder witnessed by a process server stoner who alienates his high school girlfriend while on the run with his hopelessly-stoned dealer, culminating in an epic gun battle at a former military weed test site. Yeah, that should work. Really, the story is just an excuse for Rogan and Goldberg to skewer action movie conventions (has a car chase been more full of pratfalls?) in the vein of “Hot Fuzz” while stringing together a collection of jokes about weed and other things unsacred like dead cats, policewomen who actually want to help our heroes, and loyalty among drug dealers. At the center of this story is Dale Denton (Rogan, ever the scruffy hero), the process server- who wears disguises in order to serve summons to people- who witnesses the murder of an Asian drug enforcer by Ted Jones (“Office Space’s” Gary Cole) as he’s going to serve him. Jones is aided by a corrupt cop (Rosie Perez), who gets the APB out on Denton when he has a hard time getting away from the scene of the crime and out of the parallel parking job he’s forced into. So freaked out he throws his joint out the window, even though the titular weed is smoking is rare enough to be traced, he turns to Saul (James Franco, cutting loose- really loose- from the mopey trust fund kid he played in the “Spider-Man” films and having the time of his life), who is something of a strange zen-master when it comes to pot dealers, and the two go on the run, spending an evening in the woods, wrecking Saul’s middleman Red’s (Danny McBride, a scene stealer if there ever was one) house until he talks, wrecking things with Dale’s hottie girlfriend Angie (Amber Heard) and pissing off her loose-cannon father (a psychotically-funny Ed Begley Jr.), and getting caught selling dope to school kids by a policewoman who, hey, may actually be on their side, school-aged dealing be damned.
There are a lot of mysteries to be uncovered in “Pineapple Express.” Like what’s going to happen between Dale and Angie (although their last phone conversation doesn’t leave much doubt)? Why is it that the Asian dialect sounds like a string of American profanity when it’s not subtitled, but not so much when it is subtitled, and really profane (as is the case in my favorite line in the film, “Prepare to suck the c*%& of karma!” Oh yeah, I printed it baby!)? Why make a cake for a cat that’s been dead for three months, let alone keep the litter box? What is it that make hitmen- like the ones played by Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson- go soft? Did the government do secret experiments back in the ’30s with weed on servicemen? And how the Hell can someone who’s been shot in the stomach (twice…or is that three times? Or seven?), and in a burning building full of weed and gasoline as it blows up after getting the shit beaten out of them in their own house still survive to be cursed out for reeking by a drug dealer’s grandmother? The answer you’re looking for is…who the Hell cares? “Pineapple Express”- directed by critically-acclaimed indie filmmaker David Gordon Green (cutting loose from the real truths I’ve heard he gets to in films like “George Washington,” “All the Real Girls,” “Undertow,” “Snow Angels”…I’ve never actually seen any of these films), who brings nothing but a sure hand to the material (hey, if you’re gonna sellout for a paycheck, there are worse people to do it with than Apatow)- isn’t as sure-footed with the funny as some of Apatow’s other films, but it’s such a wild ride…are you gonna really care much?
