Pineapple Express

What if a stoner’s wildest notions, both paranoid and grandiose, magically came true? Imagine a world where government-bred weed actually exists, and where every aging square is likely to blow someone away with a shotgun at the slightest suspicion of consumption. There are even hitmen trying to kill this stoner, who can track him down with nothing more than a roach he discarded on the side of the road (that’s how exceedingly rare and special the pot he smokes is). But hey, it’s cool, because the stoner is certain that he and his best buddy can totally outrun, outsmart, and outfight their assailants, much like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor did in See No Evil, Hear No Evil, except that neither one of them is blind nor deaf, they’re both just blazed out of their minds.

That, in a nutshell, is the premise of Pineapple Express, a clever and detailed pastiche of 80’s buddy movies steeped in the conventions of the stoner comedy. Making matters even more interesting is the direction of the great David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls), utilizing his uniquely organic style to create an audacious and shambolic adventure story. Green and screenwriters Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, and Evan Goldberg, show little regard for focus or consistency, allowing car chases and fist-fights to break out of the haze without warning, and regularly holding the plot in abeyance so that the principals can enjoy idyllic sun-drenched smoke sessions in forest clearings. But while that capriciousness may lead some viewers to dismiss the film as immature or impetuous, they need only look to the charming yet childish protagonists themselves to recognize that the narrative is at the mercy of their whimsical trajectory. And while not every flight of fancy works as well as the filmmakers intend, that playfulness and unpredictability goes a long way in establishing Pineapple Express as a worthy entry in whatever genre (action, stoner-comedy, buddy-flick, indie-drama) the film happens to brush against.

Rogen plays Dale Denton, a process server who spends his lunch hours either making out with his 18-year old girlfriend in the halls of her high school or buying weed off his affable dealer, Saul (James Franco in a revelatory and understatedly brilliant performance). When Dale witnesses a murder by uber-dealer Ted Logan (Gary Cole), he retreats to Saul’s house where the two grab handfuls of pot along with a crucial box of Fruit Roll-Ups to go on-the-run from Logan’s violent yet sensitive lackeys (Kevin Corrigan and The Office’s Craig Robinson). Thus begins the film’s frenetic second act, the most successful and enjoyable section of the film, both for its comedic dexterity and its stirring depiction of Dale and Saul’s burgeoning friendship. The bond between them is hilarious and touching as Franco imbues his sensitive stoner with genuine warmth and charm. Meanwhile, Dale is in the midst of an identity crisis, reluctant to fully embrace Saul out of some misguided desire for a “normal” life, worried that by accepting him as anything more than his “dealer,” he is tacitly accepting a deviant and subversive existence. Like all of Apatow’s best films, there are psychological and sociological discussions at hand amid the pot jokes and profanity, and here, the larger theme revolves around the tiny insecurities that get in the way of a valuable and indelible friendship. By bringing a seasoned art-house director like David Gordon Green into the fold, who happens to be an ace at depicting the personal cracks and flaws that distance us from our potential companions, the film is capable of exploring these ideas with an abundance of eloquence and poignancy.

But while the exploration of these notions makes for a fascinating ride, their resolution is a bit more dicey. The last half hour of the film devolves into a recreation of Lethal Weapon 4 in a veritable jungle of marijuana, which showcases some reasonably exciting action sequences and a lot of Hot Fuzzian artillery close-ups, but never allows the film to reach past “bros before hoes” in terms of a viable credo. On one level, this isn’t too surprising nor disconcerting, considering that the film is an homage to movies like 48 Hours and Silver Streak that never aspired to anything more than a primordial version of “bros before hoes” anyway. But on another level, the film’s refusal to indulge in a more universal ethos does something more interesting, if not entirely endearing to the audience: Pineapple Express distinguishes itself from other entries in the Apatow canon by refusing to grant its hero a desirable female companion whose raison d’etre is to convince the guy to grow up. Despite the freewheeling male-on-male improv sessions and expletive-laced rants about women and their propensity for robbing men of their dignity, the ultimate aim of Apatow’s and Rogen’s films has never been to glorify the male single life. Each of their movies ends with the protagonist getting the girl, giving up the drugs, and jettisoning a piece of his male social identity, while preserving or attaining a sense of self-respect.

But here, after all the carnage has passed, the film ends with an oddly extensive breakfast table conservation between the film’s leads that doesn’t exactly do much to flatter their male-centric lifestyle. The image of three men bleeding all over plates of bacon and eggs, trading “I love you, mans,” and waiting for their grandma to come pick them up is bit too absurd to be act as a moving paean to male camaraderie. But that doesn’t matter since any other ending wouldn’t be true to the characters. The audience doesn’t have to condone or reject their lifestyle to acknowledge the intimacy of Dale and Saul’s friendship nor to recognize that these two clearly aren’t ready to grow up. And the film’s refusal to force a predictable epiphany on them while following through completely on its own buddy-movie mentality is just another one of its defiant twists.