Life > August 28, 2008

By Alex Osteen | Opinion editor

Pineapple Express is just about everything that a college movie-goer should expect and want from a stoner movie, especially one coming out in the summer time, especially one written by Seth Rogen.

click to enlarge

You’d probably recognize Rogen as the guy from Knocked Up and Superbad. You’d probably recognize Pineapple Express as fitting into the same genre. However, I liked Pineapple Express the best out of all of them and here’s why.

A stoner movie, by my calculations, is a film that portrays an adventure caused by — and involving — one or more unlucky pothead, usually who is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In their adventure, the stoners usually have funny things happen to them, probably on account of their being high and/or stupid.

I suppose for me, these funny scenes somewhat trump the necessity of a coherent plot.

That is to say that I’d probably still like a stoner movie if it didn’t have any real story line as long as it had enough solid funny exchanges between the characters.

Pineapple Express had these good scenes, but, luckily, it also had a decent plot.

Dale (Seth Rogen) is a court-process clerk who spends his days getting high, then dressing in disguises to serve people affidavits. One evening, as Dale goes to serve some guy, he witnesses a murder and gets seen by the bad guys.

Amusing panic ensues and he has to run for his life. While he escapes he drops his joint of Pineapple Express, his dealer’s special strain of marijuana.

This blunder lets the murderer’s henchmen track him down, along with Saul (James Franco), the drug dealer who sold it to him.

Throughout the movie, as Dale and Saul run away from the men that are after them, more and more misfortune befalls them and their fate seems doomed.

Who really made the movie and stole the show for me, however, is James Franco.

He subtly and skillfully portrayed Saul, the simple-minded yet lovable marijuana dealer who sells pot to pay for his grandmother’s nursing home rent and who only wants to be friends with Dale. His pure innocence and cluelessness collides with Dale’s stubborn attempts at trying to figure things out, providing for hilarious interchanges and many laughs.

Most memorable of these include a scary moment in the woods, selling pot to high school students and later breakdancing with them, and stealing a slushie-covered police car.

Franco’s character in Pineapple Express was particularly highlighted in my mind as irresistible because it was so different from the dynamic Harry Osborn who he plays in the Spiderman movies.

Also of notable humor in the movie is Red (Danny R. McBride), the semi-gay middleman dealer with a slight Southern accent.

One of my favorite scenes of the movie is a childish fight that Red gets in with Saul and Dale in which he smacks Saul with a Dust Buster.

Finally, the interaction between Rosie Perez, who plays a crooked cop, and Gary Cole, the main bad guy, must have been all improv and offered a couple funny moments.

I guess I wouldn’t be a true critic if I didn’t offer at least a few notes of criticism here at the end. It deserves its R rating for serious crudeness in places, pretty substantial cursing, and drug and sex references. Don’t go see this with your parents unless they happen to be in their 20s.

I’m sure that my girlfriend would want me to warn you that the scene in which Dale gets part of his ear shot off by a hitman gets pretty graphic. Finally, the ending sequence played off of major clichés and went on for a little bit longer than was necessary.

Even though this film has been out for more than two weeks, I’d still say to give it a chance. I’d recommend going to see this with your friends for a few good laughs before school gets into full swing.

It’s a stoner movie and the best parts are the exchanges between the main characters, even more than the substance of the plot — if you have any sort of real sense of humor, you’re going to laugh out loud at Franco’s character.