Seth Rogen is Joe Stoner. Ok, maybe it’s a bit much to stick that label on Rogen. Dale Denton, Rogen’s process-serving, pot-smoking character in Pineapple Express, is Joe Stoner. With his average looks, just above-average weight and wacky day job, Denton really is the perfect picture of the mid-’20s stoner with a 9-to-5 job.
After tackling the coming-of-age raunchiness of Superbad, Rogen (Kung Fu Panda) and screenwriting partner Evan Goldberg dial their ambition up a notch. The next logical step: the stoner action comedy, naturally. As the saying goes, write what you know.
The latest offering from the minds of Judd Apatow & co. (he serves as producer here), Pineapple Express hits everything you expect and then some. As in Apatow-directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, vulgarity and sincerity manage side-by-side. With Pineapple Express, the focus is on the action, the one-liners and, of course, the pot.
Pineapple Express is the buddy comedy rethought by two stoners with an affinity for 1970s action flicks. Everything from the aged-looking film stock to the opening credits to the wardrobe screams ’70s.
It may be 2008, but aside from cell phones and “funny videos on the Internet,” Pineapple Express comes directly from the tradition of B-movie double bills, tongue in cheek of course. The concept isn’t particularly fresh, as the stoner-buddy comedy has been done before from Cheech and Chong to Jay and Silent Bob, but it hasn’t been this sharp since Harold and Kumar first went to White Castle.
The film also serves as a reconnection of sorts for James Franco (In the Valley of Elah) to the Apatow world. Other than a brief cameo in Knocked Up, Franco has been absent from the Apatow universe since he starred in the 1999 cult-TV favorite Freaks and Geeks. Here, Franco shares leading duties with Rogen as Dale’s drug dealer Saul. Against type, Franco feels surprisingly free from his James Dean aspirations, finally willing to take himself a little less seriously. As Saul, his reserved, smoke-now-think-later attitude is the perfect complement to Rogen’s (relatively) more clear-thinking side.
The plot is pretty basic: Dale buys a new and rare breed of marijuana from Saul called Pineapple Express. On his way to serve assumed drug kingpin Ted Jones (Gary Cole, Desperate Housewives) court papers, he stops for a toke outside Jones’ mansion. While blazing, Dale witnesses Jones and a police officer (Rosie Perez, The Take) murder a man who is presumed to be part of an Asian drug cartel.
Witnessing a murder, apparently, can be a major buzzkill.
In shock – and in paranoia – Dale throws the joint out the window and tries booking it in his car. Jones and the cop see someone scurry off in a car, but they don’t know who. Dale would have been fine, except he left a trace of evidence behind. And it just so happens, Jones produces the Pineapple Express, and he only sold it to one guy, who only sold it to Saul, who only sold it to Dale.
Returning to Saul, Dale convinces his dealer to go on the lam and hide from Jones until things cool off – but not before grabbing the necessary snacks … and fruit.
From then on, it’s a tactful melting pot of chases, brawls, gun fights and laughs – all of which work together. If anything, Pineapple Express is less in the Apatow brand we’ve come to expect and more akin to England’s purveyors of intelligent, R-rated comedy: Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame. As those filmmakers do so well, Rogen and Goldberg also know how to poke fun and pay homage without taking cheap shots.
Rogen and Goldberg are a bit less in-your-face than Wright and Pegg, but the outcome is just as effective and satisfying. And like the two Wright/Pegg films, the success of Pineapple Express boils down to sophisticated writing and phenomenal chemistry.
Here, Rogen proves he may be the easiest man to work with in Hollywood, once again melding perfectly with his former cast mate. We’ve seen Rogen tackle supporting roles and leading roles with a variety of cast mates in the past few years, and he never misses a step. With Franco, he’s found yet another perfect match – a more subtle, silly humor to counter his sharp wit.
Originally, Rogen’s and Franco’s roles were reversed, with Rogen as the harebrained drug dealer and Franco as the suit. Somewhere along the line, the roles were flipped, and it was the smartest thing they could have done.
Having Franco play out of character is brilliant. Give him a wig and skeeze him up a bit, and Franco’s the atypical dealer. Frankly, when cleaned up, Franco’s too good looking to be the average stoner. That’s a role better suited to Rogen, who seems to be in touch with 20-something America – it’s what he’s best at, and he proves it in Pineapple. You relate to Rogen because he doesn’t have anything special going for him. He’s just an average overweight dude who smokes way too much pot for his own good.
It’s also refreshing to see Rogen and Goldberg deviate from formula a bit. Sure, Pineapple, like Superbad, takes place over the course of one or two crazy days, but there’s no cookie-cutter sentimental ending here – just action and humor.
Pineapple Express doesn’t reinvent the stoner comedy, the buddy comedy or the action movie, but it melds all three together better than any other film has in recent memory.
rudi.greenberg@gmail.com
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
