This is one way to describe what happens when you smoke weed.
Pineapple Express is another way. Pineapple Express‘s way is to describe how you can accidentally witness a murder while getting high on the clock when you work as a process server, and suffer raging paranoia for hours which snowballs into getting hunted down by crooked cops and hitmen, and getting caught in the middle of a massive drug war.
Pineapple Express is another in the line of classic Apatow comedies, though this is another one that mixmaster Judd only produced; Superbad geniuses Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote the script for this, and relatively unknown (but apparently hugely respected in the industry) director David Gordon Green helmed this stoner action comedy. Because as far as genres go, once you have this movie labeled as such, it really is that straightforward.
First, let’s get the character actor handshakes out of the way. Craig Robinson and Kevin Corrigan were amazing as the hitman combo Matheson and Budlofsky. Robinson is better known for his roles as Darryl Philbin in The Office and as the bouncer in Knocked Up, and he’s never been anything but laugh out loud funny, mostly because his deadpan, while rivaling that of Chevy Chase or Bill Murray in its pure comedy, is more an “I’m gonna fuck you up if you say one more word” deadpan than a “What a hilariously awkward situation” deadpan. Corrigan, best known to me as terrifingly sketchy party host Mark in Superbad and for his role in the show Grounded For Life, in which he played Kramer, if he was less physically weird, and just turned up the “I’m probably a wanted felon for a number of reasons” sketch-o-meter to 11, is also great, if only for the way he just shrugs his shoulders while disappointing or deceiving whomever he’s talking to. But he’s not as funny as Robinson.
Or James Franco, who the big handshake goes to. He’s so hilarious in this movie because he pulls off the “I’ve smoked so much weed that I am never not high” vibe so well it’s scary. Check his face when he and screen-sharer Seth Rogen realize their car battery is dead. Unbelievable. Danny McBride as Red here is also incredible, more in the Craig Robinson school of daring you to laugh at his painfully straight face. Rogen, writer and star if you haven’t been taking notes, lets other characters play off him for the most part, but he gets his fair share of laughs, mostly in his exchanges for his high-school girlfriend, Angie. He’s 25 in the movie, by the way (26 in real life).
The real star of this movie is the writing, though. It’s less like Knocked Up and Superbad because it’s not structured or reliant on one-liners for its comedy. The comedy here is in entire exchanges or scenes; the way things are put together, like Rogen and Franco in their holding cell at the head dealer’s hideout, punctuated by, you guessed it, Robinson.
For my money, however, all the funniest scenes come from just watching how Rogen and Franco react to things when they’re high, most of all being their onset of paranoia in the woods, which I really can’t go into a lot of, because I already spoiled the surprise for Ben before he saw it with me (I had seen the film clip on Comedy Central the day before). Oh well.
On that same token, I’ve been trying to go easy on the spoilers in my movie reviews. Would any of my readers prefer that I go into more detail, or continue to save the movie for those who haven’t seen it? Feel free to comment with your response – every time you comment, I get an email, and I love to get emails. They make me feel like the world recognizes my existence.
P.S. – Hey, this is the 50th post on this blog! What a ways we’ve come, eh? Thanks to all of those who have prevented me from losing my faith in this site so far. Keep up the readership, it means a lot!
I Ate My DVD Collection 