Film

Pineapple Express (2008)

Director: David Gordon Green

Movie review

From Time Out Chicago

The most acclaimed director yet to sign on for the Apatow stable, Green has a keen eye for landscapes and a gift for small-town texture. But for a stoner odyssey as single-minded as Pineapple Express, you need a director who’s a lot less chill. In this context, Green’s affection for actors translates to indulgent mugging. (No matter how funny Franco sometimes is, it’s not as funny as he thinks.) What previously seemed like off-kilter pacing here becomes an unfortunate reluctance to step on the gas.

It doesn’t help that the basic premise is Team Apatow’s flimsiest yet, seemingly constructed from a high-concept Mad Lib: A process server (Rogen) and his dealer (Franco) go on the run after one of them witnesses a murder by a slow-witted drug lord (Cole) and his cop accomplice (Perez), who are competing with a group referred to throughout only as “the Asians.” Screenwriters Rogen and Evan Goldberg managed to put a personal spin on adolescent fumblings in Superbad, but the explosive mayhem here feels forced. As the Coens or David Lynch will tell you, there’s much comic potential in a severed ear, but it’s generally a matter of timing and context.

In keeping with the movie’s blissed-out vibe, Green drops subplots entirely—any word on what happens to the fawning high-school girlfriend?—and by the end the movie’s nonchalance seems less deliberate than sloppy. The lone treasure is McBride (who made his debut in Green’s All the Real Girls), hilarious as a middleman who doesn’t know when to quit. The rest may make you wonder if you were high during last year’s accolades