I wanted to like this movie a lot… and I did… mostly. Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) is a pot-head with a girlfriend still in high school and a job that makes everybody hate him (handing out subpoenas). But after he gets a little high off a new, rare brand of weed, Pineapple Express, with his drug dealer Saul (James Franco), he goes to serve Ted Jones (Gary Cole). But when he gets there, he witnesses Ted and a female cop murder somebody. Dale gets rid of his doobie and gets the heck out of there, but all is already lost. Ted is the ultimate supplier of Pineapple Express, and had only given it out to one man, Red (Danny McBride), who gave it to Saul. So now Ted is forced to send out a couple hitmen (Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson) to finish them off, thinking Dale was hired to kill him by the same men who had sent the man Ted killed in front of him. Make sense? Good.The plot of the movie is actually pretty good in its own bizarre kind of way. The biggest problem with this action-comedy, though, was the comedy. The first 30 minutes or so was very slow and the jokes just didn’t seem to work for me. They were the same, old, boring stoner jokes that would probably only make pot-heads (or at least people who have been high before) laugh. I only laughed a couple times in this beginning portion of the movie. It wasn’t until the action finally kicked into gear that I really got into the movie. And it wasn’t just because it was action, but that in the action was the true comedy. It wasn’t over-the-top by any means (well, mostly), and it was both entertaining and funny in its presentation. But the attempted comedy that wasn’t involved in the action often failed for me (some hit, but it usually failed).
As for acting, Seth Rogen was Seth Rogen. The highlight of the movie, I think, was James Franco. His acting was done rather well, and his character was both funny and easy to feel for (just because he’s such a nice, laid-back guy). The hitmen were also unique, in a way. They weren’t Jules and Vincent, but they had their own quirks. The one character that was kind of off was Red. Though it wasn’t as much the character as it was his standing in the story. After all the stuff that happens to the guy, he shouldn’t have been up and walking as well as he was at the various parts of the movie. The other bit of the story that was kinda weird was the fact that Seth Rogen, who looks like he’s almost 40, is dating a high school girl that looks 16. Though I do admit that the scene where he goes to the high school toward the beginning of the movie was pretty funny (one of the funnier parts of the first 30 minutes).
Now, I’ve seen another movie that portrayed a collaboration between this same director and director of photography, George Washington, and I often felt the same about this as I did about that (though more positive about this one). Some of the camera work/visuals were really good. Other times… not so much. Sometimes occurances in the movie were great… sometimes they were just weird. The one thing I did get kinda tired of was the constant camera zoom-in on important objects (as if to tell the audience “Hey! I’m gonna be important in a couple seconds!”).
Overall, the action was good, and the comedy within the action was good. The other attempted comedy could have been better, in my opinion, but the latter half of the movie really kind of overshadows the former half. There were some too-ridiculous moments where some worked and some didn’t. So, yeah, that’s about it. It was really good, though it could have been a bit better. It was entertaining enough once the movie got going.
I Am McLovin!
