Pineapple Express : Did That Just Happen?
I was ready for this movie. I mean, I was ready for this movie. Do you understand what I’m saying? This is a stoner movie. I was ready for it, prepared to laugh non-stop for two hours. But once the end credits rolled, I was more than a little confused, and that had nothing to do with my state of mind. Pineapple Express is a really odd movie, a hybrid between Half Baked, Hot Fuzz, and any movie starring Chevy Chase. It wants to make you laugh, but also wants to pack in a bunch of needless violence, and unlike Hot Fuzz, it makes no sense to the story. Why would a lazy process server and a shut-in pot dealer so easily embrace violence, guns, and bloodshed? They’re stoned the whole movie, they should be docile!
This is not to say that I completely hated the movie. James Franco is consistently hilarious, single-handedly saving what could have been a gigantic failure. Seth Rogen plays Stoned Seth Rogen, and part of me thinks he wrote the movie just so he could be an action hero. It’s strange seeing him ram somebody’s head into a wall for no reason. Most of the supporting actors do their job, even if their characters don’t make any sense. The hitmen (and Gary Cole’s character) are somehow both menacing and non-threatening at the same time. They will riff, bicker, and crack jokes, then immediately plug someone with three bullets. And it’s not like Pulp Fiction riffing. It’s like, “You can wear my vest. It smells nice”-type riffing. It’s funny, but funny in an “Comedy Club Improv Night” sense. It has nothing to do with the story. But wait, why am I talking about the story in a stoner comedy? We’re just supposed to laugh, right?
Well, yes. There are a ton of laughs to be found in Pineapple Express, but it also makes these crazy leaps of logic, bouncing around from scene to scene with no real care for where it ends up. And even a stoned viewer would give pause after a while and ask, “Huh?” The final scene, where the main characters sit around for five minutes and talk about the movie we just watched, is really, really strange. “Huh?” Seth Rogen has a high school girlfriend who you think will play prominently into the story, then disappears at the 3/4 mark. “Huh?” I’m assuming she’s still in a hotel room somewhere. Danny McBride’s character is shot like, 20 times throughout the movie and survives. “Huh?” At one point, Seth Rogen’s character sheds his pants and carries James Franco to safety. The whole thing is so bizarre, I started to wonder if the whole action part of the movie was simply a dream or hallucination, punctuated by Rogen’s lack of pants as often happens in dreams. Nothing crazy happens to the characters until they smoke the Pineapple Express. It’s the only way I could justify the insane shift in tone where the last half hour turns into a ridiculous shootout involving Asians and Rosie Perez. Maybe it’s all a fantasy. Or maybe I’m the one who needs to lay off the Pineapple Express.
I’d still recommend Pineapple Express for James Franco’s performance, and enough laughs to get you through about an hour and a half. Unfortunately, the movie is two hours long and could have used an editor who wasn’t afraid to kill some of the improv to improve the movie. It sort of ambles along, not sure where it will end up. Much like a stoner lost in the woods.
