Pineapple express, you might think it’s a bit of a strange title for a film. You might conjure up images of trains made from fruit slipping into the night, or a desperate race against time to get the fruit harvest to market. What you probably wouldn’t imagine is a strange, but brilliant buddy movie centered on smoking dope.
Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) is 26, spends his days driving around town, getting changed into one of many disguises to trick people into admitting their identity so he can serve them with legal papers. Occasionally he gets in touch with his 18 year old, high school, girlfriend but mainly he combines this job with listening to talk radio and smoking joints.
The only other person in Dale’s life that we’re introduced to is his drug dealer, Saul (played by James Franco). On his latest trip to score some weed, Saul makes an effort to move their relationship on form supply and demand to friendship. He sells Dale some newly acquired ‘superweed’ called pineapple express. While trying it out some male bonding happens and a new friendship is born.
Through an amazing coincidence Dale has papers to serve onto Ted (Gary Cole). Ted is at the top of the weed supply chain and is where, through an intermediary, Saul got the pineapple express from. Waiting outside of Ted’s house, and having one last spliff, Dale witnesses Ted and a police accomplice killing an Asian man. Dale, not being the coolest of characters when stoned and under pressure, panics, throws the spliff out of the window and in driving away hits two cars, drawing the attention of Ted and his accomplice.
In his panic stricken state Dale heads back over to Saul’s where he recounts the murder. Whilst going through the tale he realizes that he threw his joint out of the window, a joint made from incredibly rare weed that only Saul is selling. Dale sees the trail that will lead Ted to Saul and then from Saul to him, so they do the only thing they can, they go on the run.
Pineapple Express was written by the now holy trinity of Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow and Evan Goldberg. These three go back together through Knocked Up and Superbad so they have some pedigree. While the writing team is nothing new to comedy the director is. David Gordon Green, better known for his work in the Drama and Thriller genre takes an inspired change of direction and shows a real flare for comedy.
In terms of the acting I have to admit that when I first saw Seth Rogen in 40 Year Old Virgin I thought he was a talent that I’d see more of, but in a supporting role, not as the lead. I’m happy to be proved wrong though as he’s now successfully helmed a couple of great films and continues to shine here. Apparently Seth wrote the part of Saul for himself, but gave it up when he saw how amazing Franco was with it and I have to say that Seth made an inspired judgment call. Currently Franco is best known as Harry Osborn in the Spiderman franchise, but this is probably his best performance to date. Along the way we also meet Saul’s intermediary dealer, a very interesting character called Red. The writers can be accused of many things I’m sure, but writing one dimensional boring characters isn’t one of them. The main protagonists here are all very different, very interesting, well fleshed out and well acted.
The film is centered on drugs, but the film covers much more ground. At its’ core is a buddy movie, but it throws in a great car chase and a shoot out as well. This is a film with a lot of swearing and quite a lot of slapstick violence. The difference here is that, unlike other films, the slapstick leaves its’ mark. At the end of the film our protagonists look like they’ve been run through the mill. Picture a stoned Bruce Willis at the end of the first Die Hard.
I’ll admit to being a fan of the groups’ previous work but I’ve never found their films to have me rolling on the floor in fits of laughter. Pineapple Express was also along the same lines for me, during the film I was thoroughly entertained and amused, but didn’t find myself laughing out loud very much. It’s only at the end of the film when you look back at it’s entirety that you see what a work of almost genius it is. I was bitterly disappointed when it ended and would’ve happily watched it from the start again straight away.
The Blu Ray is presented to us as a full 1080p HD AVC 2.40:1 encode. The picture is crisp and clear with no real issues or artifacts. With a comedy film of this type there isn’t the need for as good a transfer as with a big budget movie laden with SFX, but the transfer here goes above and beyond what it needed to do. This is more of a character movie than a visual one, but there are a few scenes at the end, during the shoot out, that the visuals come into their own. Sound is also very good, we’re treated to Dolby TrueHD track, but as with the picture, in a comedy the best thing you can say about the soundtrack usually is that the dialogue was clear and this is certainly the case here. There’re only really a couple of sequences in the film that will make use of a full surround sound system, but it’s worth it when the sub does eventually kick into life.
We’re also treated to a wealth of extras. When you initially choose to play the film an option appears that lets you choose between theatrical versions and the extended cut and I have to say I loved having this option. There’s a pretty run of the mill commentary with cast and crew, which if you’re interested in these things is worth a listen. In the deleted scenes section we’re shown three sequences which hit the cutting room floor, but they didn’t really add much to the film, so better that they stay there. As well as the extended film cut there’s also and extended and alternate scenes section that has some quite interesting material in. There’s a making of documentary a gag real and a host of other material that if you’re a fan of the group is well worth watching.
This was the best comedy I’ve seen in a long time. If you’ve enjoyed the likes of 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad etc. then this is a no brainer, you’ll love this, go out and buy it immediately, don’t rent it, buy it, you’ll be watching it a lot more than once, in fact buy two copies just in case you wear one out.