Kelly WandTotally Chronic “Pineapple Express” review, bra! [California medical prescription required]
August 20th 2008 01:21
Rogen and Franco inhale just enough smoke.
You don’t have to be stoned to enjoy Pineapple Express but it most certainly helps.
As proof, here’s crotchety, bland, not-fit-to-lick-Siskel’s-anal -bead Richard Roeper on Pineapple Express: “Watching Pineapple Express is like sitting dead sober in a room with a bunch of stoned people who are laughing uproariously. They’re having a great time. You’re not.” (You sense Roeper wasn’t been invited to many parties as a tot, or a collegian, or an adult. Poor pasty milquetoast bastard.)
Pineapple Express opens in black and white, in 1937, and I’ve already spoiled too much. Director David Gordon Green's last credit was Snow Angels (a movie that doubtless caused Richard Roeper’s vagina to sing hymns), which was apparently neither an action movie nor a comedy, yet here he stages the funniest, longest, brutal-est, most ridiculous fights ever committed to celluloid, battles between stoners and stoners, stoners and cops, stoners and ninjas, and stoners and ninjas and drug dealer gunmen – enough weirdly paced, ingeniously chaotic, amusingly remorse-filled sequences that it’s hard to believe how much of the film consists of even more ingenious dialogue (much of it seemingly improvised), just as it’s hard to believe the film’s funniest character (and all of them are) isn’t Rogen or pompadoured Danny McBride but Spider-Man’s pretty-boy James Franco of all people, who does here for stoners what Heath Ledger did last month for clown princes. Rogen and McBride play the other two tips of what’s basically a gay love triangle (weed is a little gay, admittedly, from the canine affectionate vibes to the fact that you’re usually swapping lip-spit via joint-butts and bong-rims), all set against a staccato backdrop of gunfire and car chases and panicked dashes through kitchens and forests that never upstages the characters. It’s about being dumb when you’re high, and also about being smart.
There’s a funny subplot involving Rogen having dinner with his hot blond 18-year-old girlfriend and her understandably disapproving parents, for fear of her leaving him for a jock her own age who does killer Jeff Goldblum impressions. People get shot and tortured and burned and beaten but never seem to suffer; there’s never been a more laid-back movie with such a high body count. Stoners and gangsters alike confess their hurt feelings to their hardened male colleagues. Rosie Perez in a puffy little blue cop suit and a rangy, laid-back Gary Cole have bizarrely convincing foreplay. Stuff breaks. People die. The survivors have breakfast. It all sounds like a disjointed mess but what great comedy doesn’t? And as wacky as it all sounds (and is), part of the appeal is that set alongside most stoner comedies like Harold and Kumar and Cheech and Chong Drive A Van Someplace Else, the action in Express is comparatively confined to the real world. Comparatively.
It’s movies like this that complicate the already impossible task of explaining what makes great comedy work. Trying to analyze humor is like pinning a butterfly or, to paraphrase Franco’s character, killing a unicorn. Shaping and appreciating comedy is more like a reflex, a state of mind that doesn’t lend itself easily to story-pitch notes, and dissecting it is sort of like reading a medical article on how farts work versus hearing Richard Roeper rip one in the middle of delivering his grandmother’s eulogy.
And, curiously, the most obviously funny comic ideas rarely yield the best results. A friend of mine saw Tropic Thunder and observed that Ben Stiller’s ideas usually tend to be funnier than the execution. An action-movie guy, a lowbrow comedian, and Downey, Jr. in blackface all thinking they’re in a movie but fighting for real sounds good on paper but sort of one-note. Stiller hammers you with similar, predictable jokes over and over, loudly; he’s a little too proud of them. Pineapple Express’ pitch doesn’t sound as promising (the script was written all the way back in 2001 and was probably only greenlit thanks to Apatow) but its execution is inspired and as brilliant as Dark Knight in its casual self-assurance. It’s a funny movie where Tropic Thunder’s a funny trailer. It has barely audible throwaway lines like the one Red shouts near the end as he drives off leaving Rogen to die that are more memorable than anything in Get Smart or Thunder or any other comedy since, well, Superbad. You get the sense the performers were encouraged to try and bust up the crew with something unexpected during every shot, and one wonders enviously what they smoked at the wrap party.
Here’s hoping for a sequel, preferably scripted and shot on film-stock made entirely of hemp.
Special Bonus Anecdote:
En route to the theater, my stoned friend and I were accosted by a young dude and a girl with a nose-ring with intense expressions handing out Xeroxed leaflets on the sidewalk to passersby.
Girl with nose-ring: “Did you know the Government is making microchips to implant inside us all so they can keep track of our whereabouts 24 and 7?”
My friend and I in unison: “Yeah.”
Girl (confused): “Oh…”
My friend (reaching for the extended leaflet): “Does this tell me how I can get one?”
Girl (without really listening; smiles; urging us off): “Yeah, there’s a number on the back.”
| 53 |
| Vote |
Shared on
Subscribe to this blog
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
I'll probably watch Pineapple Express one day... I'm just not in a hurry. Tropic Thunder was surprisingly funny, but just like you say, a funny idea rather than funny execution. Stiller's style has become so predictable and ham-handed.
Comment by Ben Whitcomb
Extreme Critic