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| Scene from Pineapple Express |
If there's one thing that can never be overstated, it's that Seth Rogen loves weed. To look at his filmography is to see an actor who not only gained popularity in Knocked Up saying lines like "Luke, I am your stoner," but seemed to be the spokesperson for stoner comedy in the wake of middling Harold & Kumar sequels. It's particularly why Pineapple Express, his magnum opus of this subgenre, feels so pure of heart. With writing partner Evan Goldberg, the duo set out to make an action comedy based around the bromance of Dale Denton (Rogen) and his dealer Saul Silvers (James Franco). It could just be that the film was so familiar to Rogen's mindset that it ended up working beautifully, but it also served as evidence that the Judd Apatow improvisational troupe comedy style could be applied to any genre and work just as adeptly. It may be dumb and high as a kite, but hey... Rogen and crew are smart enough to know how to make it work and it continues to sizzle 10 years later.
Part of the genius clearly comes from Rogen and Franco, former Freaks and Geeks alum that have made a career out of riffing off each other in films like This is the End and The Interview. Their conversational style fit the idea of getting high and having lengthy conversations that were essentially about nothing. It helped that the two had perfected their chemistry and that somewhere underneath their masculinity was the formation of something greater. It was the idea that men could be friends who opened up to each other, even if Franco's Saul was quite possibly too inept to understand nuance. There was a bond and a need to survive together. It's why when the first redband trailer for the film dropped featuring M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes," it felt like a bit of a phenomenon. It wasn't just a comedy, but one that took the Rogen/Franco mythos to the next level, finding what worked about their late-20's mentality and Rogen's moment as the hottest thing in comedy.
It also made sense then that bringing in director David Gordon Green would produce would allow the character dynamic to shine through the action tropes and extended scenes of smoking something called a "cross-joint." While one could argue that the film ruined Green's career for the near future with lowbrow comedies like Your Highness and The Sitter, he was the perfect fit at the time for a film that existed as a tightly wound script being lead by stream-of-conscious comedy and references to various action films. It was a nice balance of styles, mixing the slacker mentality of stoners with the adrenaline chase of a drug heist movie. While it could never be said that Rogen wrote a masterpiece of action, it could be argued that it found a way to revolutionize the style in memorable ways, bringing his buddy Danny McBride along for one of his two breakout roles of August 2008 besides Tropic Thunder.
But what makes the film exceptional? In some respects, it's the one stoner comedy that manages to play dumb while also finding something smart and endearing underneath. It opens with a satire of 50's sci-fi b-movie aesthetic where a man (Bill Hader) smokes the marijuana ("pineapple express") and proceeds to make felatio jokes. There's a sense of danger that comes with the scientist yelling for the drug to be illegal before cutting to Dale, a process server, driving around to "Electric Avenue," and giving out unwanted news (in one of the film's more dated references, Dale ends each moment with some version of "You've been served," which may or may not be a You Got Served reference... if you even remember that movie). He is a bit pathetic, unable to be respectable even to his girlfriend, who is still in high school. He calls up talk radio shows, suggesting that he'll do something rash if marijuana isn't legalized. That is the type of movie this is: one that's absurd enough to include unexpected style choices, and espouses the joys of a drug that ends up killing more people by association.
Franco, in a Golden Globe-nominated role, is possibly the most charming element of the film as the most innocent drug dealer out there. He almost seems to deal drugs not only because he's too dumb to get another job, but because he's trying to find friends. It becomes a story of trust that is constantly derailed by male friends ribbing each other, such as one scene where Saul uses his finger to hitchhike by sticking it out of his pants. It's constantly antagonistic, finding problems through its own means. By the end, it's a story of three stoners (Rogen, Franco, and McBride) overcoming some harrowing experiences and finding that they're lucky to be alive, in part because of the mess that they put themselves into.
Even then, Green's direction allows the film to find the moments of friendship in between moments of action and peril. The highlight of the film is a car chase that is started when Saul thinks that Dale is being arrested, but instead is getting help on the case. This proceeds to a chase that wouldn't be out of place in a Michael Mann film. Instead, it's one where Saul tries to see through a messed up window by knocking out the windshield and getting his foot brutally stuck, all while driving at 35-40 mph. There is a realism underneath the poor decisions that allows things to rattle along in memorable ways. The action is made funnier because of the stoners' inability to possibly stick the landing on anything they do. The weed may make them superman at heart, but they're just another foot stuck in a windshield, driving into unknown peril.
It's a film that belong to the rarely successful action-comedy category, which has remained strong specifically with films like Game Night. However, there's a delicate balance between something being funny and action being horrific, especially given that this is a raunchy R-Rated ride. Maybe it's just that the ensembles of Apatow-produced comedies of the time made careers, but everyone in the film serves an effective purpose and lands more than enough jokes to make it a hoot. It could also just be that the juxtaposition makes more sense than other action-comedies that have come since. After all, many crime films center around drug kingpins. It only makes sense that this one does too, even if everyone is maybe a bit too dumb to ever be one step ahead of the other.
The magic of Rogen and Franco have probably been done in more accessible manners in the decade since. However, this is a film that embodies Rogen's early career as a man unlikely to be seen too long without a bong. Even in later films like Neighbors, there would be some satire noting his drug habits. Still, this is one of those lightning in a bottle films that is pure hilarity and manages to do so based solely on how committed everyone is to the dumb premise. It helps that the cinematic language is rich enough to make the action better than cheap knock-offs. Still, it feels a bit like a cheat that the film This is the End once famously teased a sequel on April Fool's Day. It's clear that everyone still likes each other (as recently as last year's The Disaster Artist) and is likely to continue working with each other long after they become profitable. But still, the film's reflection of male bonding was part of a shift to something more progressive and modern, which is a strange thing to have underneath a film that never takes itself too seriously.
Franco, in a Golden Globe-nominated role, is possibly the most charming element of the film as the most innocent drug dealer out there. He almost seems to deal drugs not only because he's too dumb to get another job, but because he's trying to find friends. It becomes a story of trust that is constantly derailed by male friends ribbing each other, such as one scene where Saul uses his finger to hitchhike by sticking it out of his pants. It's constantly antagonistic, finding problems through its own means. By the end, it's a story of three stoners (Rogen, Franco, and McBride) overcoming some harrowing experiences and finding that they're lucky to be alive, in part because of the mess that they put themselves into.
Even then, Green's direction allows the film to find the moments of friendship in between moments of action and peril. The highlight of the film is a car chase that is started when Saul thinks that Dale is being arrested, but instead is getting help on the case. This proceeds to a chase that wouldn't be out of place in a Michael Mann film. Instead, it's one where Saul tries to see through a messed up window by knocking out the windshield and getting his foot brutally stuck, all while driving at 35-40 mph. There is a realism underneath the poor decisions that allows things to rattle along in memorable ways. The action is made funnier because of the stoners' inability to possibly stick the landing on anything they do. The weed may make them superman at heart, but they're just another foot stuck in a windshield, driving into unknown peril.
It's a film that belong to the rarely successful action-comedy category, which has remained strong specifically with films like Game Night. However, there's a delicate balance between something being funny and action being horrific, especially given that this is a raunchy R-Rated ride. Maybe it's just that the ensembles of Apatow-produced comedies of the time made careers, but everyone in the film serves an effective purpose and lands more than enough jokes to make it a hoot. It could also just be that the juxtaposition makes more sense than other action-comedies that have come since. After all, many crime films center around drug kingpins. It only makes sense that this one does too, even if everyone is maybe a bit too dumb to ever be one step ahead of the other.
The magic of Rogen and Franco have probably been done in more accessible manners in the decade since. However, this is a film that embodies Rogen's early career as a man unlikely to be seen too long without a bong. Even in later films like Neighbors, there would be some satire noting his drug habits. Still, this is one of those lightning in a bottle films that is pure hilarity and manages to do so based solely on how committed everyone is to the dumb premise. It helps that the cinematic language is rich enough to make the action better than cheap knock-offs. Still, it feels a bit like a cheat that the film This is the End once famously teased a sequel on April Fool's Day. It's clear that everyone still likes each other (as recently as last year's The Disaster Artist) and is likely to continue working with each other long after they become profitable. But still, the film's reflection of male bonding was part of a shift to something more progressive and modern, which is a strange thing to have underneath a film that never takes itself too seriously.
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