Dir. David Gordon Green
Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Rosie Perez, Gary Cole
Judd Apatow is certainly the best thing that has happened to adult oriented comedy in a long time. Not only did his previous films (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up) prove that you could make money without resorting to cutting everything possible to get a PG-13 rating, but he also proved that you could combine lowbrow humor with sharp, observational character development. Many of his protege's have now taken his lead and have been extremely successful, although recent outings have unfortunately amped up the raunchy elements and disposed with much of the strong character work that was evident in films directed by Apatow. Pineapple Express mostly falls into this trap, although it is still an extremely funny film.
The film follows Dale Denton (Seth Rogen), a process server who likes pot very, very much. One day while getting ready to serve someone, he witnesses a murder. He gets spotted by the killer because it's not that easy to make a smooth getaway when you're high. This sends both Dale and his pot dealer Saul (James Franco) on the run. Going to the cops is out of the question, because one of the people involved in the murder was a policewoman (Rosie Perez). Their day gets worse and worse as it goes along, including a double crossing friend, a car that won't start, a furious girlfriend, her even more furious parents, and a warehouse gunfight.
David Gordon Green is an interesting choice to direct this material. He's a well respected indie auteur who made a memorable debut with the small town drama George Washington. At first, he seems like an odd choice for the material, because none of his previous films have had a hint of humor in them. However, those films were all about disaffected people that didn't really fit in with the rest of society, and that's exactly the case with the characters in Pineapple Express. There's never a hint that he doesn't know how mine humor from a situation, and he seems right at home with even the most outlandish comic moments. The part that eludes him is the final warehouse gunfight. It's an elaborate action sequence with three different sets of people all trying to kill one another, but Green doesn't really know how to stage it properly. There are several cuts at awkward moments and he too often relies on the bad guys taking illogical actions.
Still, the lack of an effective action sequence wouldn't really doom a movie like this, which isn't meant to be taken seriously in the first place. However, that's kind of the problem. Seth Rogen and his writing partner Evan Handler wrote this script, and it runs into the same problems as their earlier collaboration in Superbad. Dale and Saul are likable guys and we want to root for them, but their screenplay would rather tell as many (admittedly funny) lowbrow jokes as possible instead of taking some more time to develop the rest of the characters. Almost all of the supporting characters – the policewoman, the killer, the hitmen, the girlfriend, her parents – are decidedly one dimensional.
This is much different than the films directed by Apatow himself. Both Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin contained a deep cast of characters that were both funny and real. For example, Knocked Up had time to develop a realistic marital subplot in the midst of all the craziness and didn't sacrifice the humor one bit. Another Apatow vet, Jason Segel, got into the game earlier this year with the wonderful Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The differences in the approach between Segel and Rogen are very noticeable. Like Apatow, Segel's crazy comic moments co-exist with warm, human moments and a deep cast of fully realized characters.
Of course, it would be wrong to deny that this is a very funny movie. Rogen and Franco are both terrific in their roles and have a wonderful comic chemistry. It's especially refreshing to see Franco back in a comedic role, as his mumbling dramatic performances have become increasingly interminable to watch. Rogen and Handler's screenplay is littered with one hilarious joke after another, but it is simply missing that extra depth that Apatow and Segel have brought to their films.
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