Pineapple Express: Review

3.5 stars out of 5

7.4 stars out of 10

Directed by David Gordon Green

Staring Seth Rogen and James Franco

For personal reasons, I wanted this movie to be amazing. And it was, for at least the first half. I love any movie in which all of the paranoid pot derived delusions of the protagonists are spot on and keep them one step in front of the bad guys. I couldn’t begin to keep track of all the quotable moments, since they were so rapid fire that the laughing from one blended into the laughing at the next. I really loved seeing this on imdb: “In the scene where Dale and Saul are beating up Red in his house, Red's cold sore first appears, then disappears, then appears again”. Extra half a star for a disappearing cold sore whether it was make-up or brought to the set by the actor Danny McBride.

But somewhere at the halfway point, the quick witted pot-talk went stale and the action scenes turned into boring shoot outs in which no one seems to say down. By the time the fourth assumed-to-be down bad guy was reanimated, I had checked out. I must blame this on the direction of David Gordon Green who’s other films include the critically acclaimed and Roeper’s hot pick ‘Snow Angels’, a film that has been on my “to see” list for a while. His lack of experience with the action genre killed this movie and is making me reconsider my unquestioning love for anything attached to the producer, Judd Apaptow. It was good to see old friends, Seth Rogen and James Franco, pair up on screen. It takes me back to the good old days of “Freaks and Geeks”, the Apatow directed short lived TV series. My recommendation is then to see this film written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg IF you can pay matinee prices and be high as balls.
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