[Movie Review] PINEAPPLE EXPRESS
Despite being the two most popular genres of movie, it’s very hard in my opinion to combine action with comedy and birth something that isn’t dispensable after one viewing. Action comedies work as pieces of pure escapist fun, but something to hold on to? Nah, not usually for me. There are a few exceptions but, by and large, they’re nothing more than throwaway post-pub fodder! For every True Lies there’s an I Spy. To make an action comedy of real merit, worth and something that could loftily be considered a “classic” it’s all about perfecting the tone of both your action AND your comedy. Too stupid and we don’t care about the characters enough when the action roles. Too serious and the comedy doesn’t work. To perfect an action comedy is to make something wonderful because there often isn’t a better cinematic experience, up there on the big screen in surround sound, laughing along with your mates and gripping the arm rests during the adrenaline pumping set pieces. That’s why Midnight Run is an absolute joyous experience and many, if not all, a Martin Lawrence movie is the equivilent of someone twanging an elastic band off your testicles whilst you sleep – painful and without humour!
Kristina reviewed Pineapple Express. She did not like it. You can read her review here. I disagree with Kristina. She knew I would so there is no surprises being sprung here. Pineapple Express isn’t a classic. It has a few too many flaws here and there to be loftily handed that label. But it is a DAMN good time at the cinema. It knows what it wants to be and what it wants to deliver to you the viewer, and it sets about doing it with the utmost confidence. And damnit if I haven’t gone and used my conclusion upfront and centre as my introduction!
I liked Hot Fuzz a great deal but my biggest problem was that it wanted to be a “playful homage” but it stepped too close to the edge and fell into the area of “pastiche”, before just going all out as a “spoof”. It was fun as hell, but it never ended up as what it wanted to be. There is no such case to consider with Pineapple Express.
This film knows exactly what it is paying homage to – the bastardisation of the 80s action movie and the stoner comedy – and it does it with utter conviction, never once dropping its guard and stepping into David Zucker style spoof or out-and-out farce; from the sudden burst of Graham Revell’s adrenaline pumping score to highlight an action sequence that comes out of nowhere, right the way through to the illogical insanity of a ballistic shoot-out in a secret base come movie’s end for no other reason then the fact that it’s time for the “climax” so this must be how it is. Hell, this movie is so sure about what it is doing with paying homage to both genres that it has a check-list of cliches that they must adhere to but inject with a bit of a post-modern/ironic spin along the way: incompetent hitmen on the trail of our heroes? Check! The betrayal of our heroes by someone they trust? Check! Car-chases? Check! Shoot-outs? Check? Man, this movie even realises that all truly great 80s movies had a song by Huey Lewis in which the title of the movie is mentioned in the lyrics… so stick around during the end credits in order to hear Huey Lewis singing ‘The Pineapple Express’. Best of all though, Apatow/Green/Rogen et all have realised that targeting the “stoner” crowd exclusively would be a wrong move. This movie doesn’t just play to those who’ve toked on a joint before. It plays to everyone, and just holds over an extra wink or two in the general direction of the ‘erb lovers!
Many a critic wants to highlight the fact that this “throwaway comedic action romp” is directed by indie darling David Gordon Green. The man does a friggin’ good job, what can I say? I loved Green’s All The Real Girls and if anyone had said to me that the guy who made that would one day make an action movie about a couple of stoners, then yeah I’d probably have thought you were talking a load of shit, but the guy nails it brilliantly. A scene in which are heroes are “lost” in the woods is actually almost beautiful and I genuinely prefer what he does here (with the load-up-for-the-shoot-out montage sequence) then what Edgar Wright did in Hot Fuzz.
Seth Rogen still hasn’t let me down and he more then delivers here, in my opinion. Yet again he reveals himself to be in that small camp alongside the likes of Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell, who can make pretty much any line or the reading of any line insanely amusing. People are talking about James Franco’s turn here as if it is some sort of “comedic revelation”. He really is quite brilliant. He’s like an over enthusiastic puppy in human form. BUT this isn’t anything new. Regular Apatow fans and Freaks & Geeks junkies will know that, when he’s not disappearing up his own arse or making guilty pleasures (shitty guilty pleasures, mind you) like Annapolis, Franco’s turn in the “greatest TV show ever made” showed he was more than capable of doing good comedy.
You don’t need me to highlight Danny McBride. The guy is three for three. And what a year huh? First The Foot Fist Way. Then Tropic Thunder (or that last, here in the UK) and now this? He’s fucking hysterical and, yes this movie is INSANELY quotable, but the majority of the lines you’ll be throwing out there will probably come from McBride’s “indestructible (?)” Red. ["You just got killed by a Daewoo Lanos, motherfucker!"] ["Today's my cat's birthday"] ["I know Saul. I'm sorry. It's just, after all this, and seeing this guy's nuts get smashed with my Daewoo, I love you bro. I want to be inside you, homes!"] ["I feel like the nerd at the sleep-over that fell asleep at nine."] ["I used to use this little gun when I was a prostitute. "] ["I'm trying to decide how stoned I am and just how on the verge of death am I right now. Like, am I seeing shit because I'm stone or because I have no blood left in my body."]
As I said Pineapple Express isn’t perfect but the awkward thing is that to lose those imperfections, you’d need to lose some genuinely great moments that spring from them. The subplot involving Amber Heard’s high school “hottie” is superflous and not really needed but to take it out would mean losing the hilarious scenes involving Ed Begley Jnr and Nora Dunn as her parents. The stuff involving the “at war with the Asians” is never really developed properly yet to remove it would mean we wouldn’t get to see Ken Jeong make another scene-stealing appearance in an Apatow production (faithful Apatow-ites will remember him as the doctor in the finale of Knocked Up). The guy has barely anything to do other then to offer up a couple of crazy cliched lines of dialogue, filled with inappropriate malpropisms and then run around shooting at shit but he absolutely nails it. One of the biggest laughs at the screening I was at, filled with cynical much-older journalists, was when Jeong’s character screamed “War is upon you! Prepare to suck the cock of karma!” In a movie FILLED with hilarious one-liners and zingers galore, this is some accolade!
Pineapple Express knows that it is stupid. It almost wears the label as a badge of honour. That’s what makes it so goddamn likeable. It realises that the very notion of a “stoner action movie” is ridiculous and all involved have sat back, acknowledged this then simply set about finding a way to sell it convincingly. And that it does. It is hilariously funny but invests its action sequences with an absolute pitch-perfect sense of tone so that we’re thrilled at the same time that we’re laughing. An excellent example would be the car chase in which James Franco drives with his foot stuck through the windscreen. Describing it in written form does not do it justice.
An action comedy, by definition, should thrill you, entertain you and make you laugh. For me, Pineapple Express did all of those things and then some. I had an absolute blast and whilst it’s not worthy of being put on a pedestal alongside Midnight Run, it’s definitely a film I can’t wait to see again and mouth along with certain lines of dialogue whilst laughing heartily! And there’s not many action comedies I feel that way about, let alone “stoner action comedies”.
NB: By waiting the requested period and publishing this review this evening, I am not breaking any rules. Pineapple Express previewed nationwide last night (10.09.2008) so this review is landing smack bang between that and it’s full release tomorrow. You know, for those watching me carefully and reading along with this. You know who you are! 
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6 Responses to “[Movie Review] PINEAPPLE EXPRESS”
In the words of Lex Luthor…
WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!
No not really, now if you were talking about you’re review of the movie then it would be spot on.
It just ****ing burns me that you didn’t like this movie. As much as I am all for difference of opinions and different tastes etc. Hell, half of what I like Grundy/James/Chris etc don’t but I don’t hate them for it, but I cannot shake the fact that you give THIS movie “two popcorns” and that mediocre tripe 21 “three popcorns”.
I mean this is a fun, funny, surprisingly deft movie. It was a movie with two very likeable, well-etched lead characters AND it was a stoner comedy that didn’t even require the drug-referencing to be overt in a review of its brilliance.
Shame on you Kris. I’m disappointed in you. Next time we meet up… NO oral sex for you, young lady! lol
PS
I hope to ****ing God Wyv reviews this soon. I have every faith in the world that he’ll see it for what it is!
Wyv – you need to break this tie mate!
I’m sorry, but this just did not do it for me. Oh well. Go see Tropic Thunder instead!
I’ve seen it. I seen it a week or so ago on the same day that I saw this. Unfortunately, I’ve finally burnt the marketing team that arrange my screenings as I’m under a sort of unofficial warning at the moment re posting my reviews too soon.
Funny that when I’m posting favourable reviews for films getting bad press (National Treasure 2 for example) they don’t say shit but when I slight Death Race a month ahead of its release, I get told “no more UK Exclusives”
The “UK Exclusives” tag WILL be back. I just don’t want to burn my bridges at the moment because I’m off to NYC in October and this same company are getting me tickets to the EAGLE EYE IMAX EXPERIENCE and preview tickets for ZACK & MIRI MAKE A PORNO so I’m not wanting to piss them off just yet!
Tropic Thunder though? A great movie! It works as a double bill with THIS movie – which is technically how I saw it. Two fun, funny, surprisingly deft flicks!
The comedy genre is SO healthy at the moment!
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