previewmonkey.com

I have been putting off writing a review for Pineapple Express, the latest brotastic buddy comedy to issue forth from Judd Apatow and company. The reason for this is two-fold: One, I am lazy and Two, I was not too sure whether I liked it.

The story is simple enough: Seth Rogen stars as Dale Denton, an affable yet somewhat obnoxious young man quickly approaching middle age. He works as a court process clerk; basically it is his job to make sure court papers and subpoenas get served to unwilling recipients. In between serving court documents (sometimes in some very creative ways) he likes to get as stoned as possible and harass his local talk-radio channel with his opinions on marijuana (and other, related topics.)

One afternoon he drops by his dealer, Saul Silver (played to greasy stoner perfection by James Franco,) who introduces him to a very rare and exquisitely potent strain of marijuana called Pineapple Express. Dale grabs a banky and heads off to serve his last documents for the day. It just so happens that he is about to serve papers to a big-time dealer (played Gary Cole) who, with his crooked cop partner (Rosie Perez) unwittingly commit a murder in front of Dale.

Dale panics and throws the joint he was enjoying out of the window before heading to Saul’s apartment to cover his tracks. From there we are taken on an increasingly absurd journey as Dale and Saul try, amongst other things: to avoid a pair of contract killers with intimacy issues, deal with Saul’s morally ambiguous supplier (played by Danny McBride) and rescue Dale’s teenage girlfriend and her family.

The story for Pineapple Express was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who previously worked together on Superbad, which was also produced by Judd Apatow. Much like Superbad, Pineapple Express is not so much about the plot as it is about the interaction between the characters and the situations they get involved in. That would not be such a bad thing, however, in Pineapple Express extremely large segments of the movie either relate directly to marijuana, or are seemingly designed to simulate the inane conversations that stoned people tend to have amongst themselves.

The film pretty much settles into a rhythm of hilarious and exciting set piece (be it a fight scene or a car chase) followed by a much more low-key talky segment. While for the most part it is relatively well-paced, some of the longer conversational sections do tend to drag out a bit. One almost gets the feeling that director David Gordon Green just let his cast have fun together and riff off of each other as much as they liked and loosely edited the results together.

All this is not to say that Pineapple Express is a bad film. The script and story are actually surprisingly well-intentioned, and heart-felt and sincere in places. Also, unlike so many comedies coming out lately (I mean you Harold and Kumar) it tries to steer clear of fart jokes and human secretion comedy. Furthermore you get a sense that the cast is really enjoying working together.  Rogen and Franco make for an unlikely odd-couple pairing but pull it off very well. The extended cameos by Danny McBride and Rosie Perez are also very entertaining.

In conclusion, Pineapple Express is a good-hearted stoner comedy that is often short of laughs but makes up for it with a lot of charm and good solid from-the-belly guffaws where it matters most. Just be prepared for some long awkward parts in between.

Walrus Recommendation: Wait for it to come out on DVD.