Pineapple Express

So Pineapple Express was a bitter disappointment.

I remember watching Minority Report and really feeling so confused that a director with such technical expertise as Spielberg could make such an incompetent movie. Not bad-- great directors make bad movies all the time. But incompetent, failing in basic areas of momentum and pacing and exposition and coherence-- I don't expect that from a great director. But that jetpack fight scene is one of the worst I've ever seen, in terms of the filmmakers utterly failing to achieve what they wanted to achieve. Spielberg's movies often fail on an emotional level, but an action scene? Failure on a technical level? It was inexplicable.

It was sort of the same thing with Pineapple Express, though not specifically in regards to the director. I'm actually not a big Judd Apatow fanboy, but I do expect his movies to have at least a few hilarious scenes and demonstrate a certain minimum threshold of comedic ability. But I never laughed out loud at Pineapple Express, not once. Joke after joker fell flat, and worse, the movie seemed to believe that it could just sort of coast along on banter. Well, a movie can, and that kind of seemingly off-the-cuff verbal humor is my favorite. But, you know, it's got to be funny, and almost all of the banter in the movie is half-smile amusing. I think it's another example of how the danger of success in complacency. I can imagine Seth Rogen and Apatow and whoever sitting around saying "This is a Judd Apatow movie... this stuff has to be funny, right?"

There are numerous moments where I struggle to see what exactly was supposed to be funny at all. The last scene of the movie is a long riffing conversation that just isn't funny, at any particular time, but those involved seem to think that if the play it for just five minutes more, it'll take it to the next level. Also, there is a very distracting bit of meta-ness or two, "knowing" comedy, which don't work at all. That kind of humor can be great, but it has to be part of a larger context in which it makes sense, and has to be done with great care. It isn't, here; it's just dropped into the movie with little regard for how well it works at all. Absurdist humor is very rewarding but perhaps the hardest to pull off, and it has to be committed to or abandoned.

Of course, like all stoner movies Pineapple Express has a built-in defense: you have to be high for it to be good. And perhaps I would have enjoyed it more in that, uh, context. But look, stoner movies can be very effective, watched straight, if they're good enough-- Half Baked is fantastically funny whatever state you watch it in. Also, there's a brief anti-smoking marijuana, let's-get-mature moment that I imagine would be pretty harsh if you did watch the movie high. Like many of the movie's moments, though, it's used and discarded immediately, so it doesn't really stay with you.

It's too bad. I was really ready for a hilarious movie, or one with some hilarious scenes, but ultimately I just left feeling discouraged. And wondering what the hell Rosie Perez was doing in that movie.

And Dana Stevens, good god.... I've tried, I really have. She isn't getting better. This review has nothing to do with the movie I saw today. Nothing at all. I honestly often think that she comes up with an idea for her reviews before she sees the movies and then shoehorns her impressions into that framework. Her "big idea" for this review is that the violence of the final section of the movie makes a hilarious movie too harsh. (Dana, a movie reel is about 10-12 minutes of action. You've described the scene already as "nearly 20 minutes". So saying that it happens in the final reel, especially when there's another 10 minutes of useless filler, really doesn't make sense.) It's true, the final violent showdown makes no sense and is atmospherically and tonally all wrong. But by that point, I was so put-off by the movie's general failure to achieve anything like the mood it was attempting that it made little difference.

And, you know, that argument would be more salient if the movie actually were hilarious for the most part. I know that to an extent I'm berating her for not having my subjective feelings towards the humor of the movie... but funnier than Superbad? For serious? And praising Danny McBride's performance... I don't see it. I kept expecting the guy to be funny. I kept seeing how it could be funny. But the movie kept not delivering, over and over and over.

Stevens says that "The swath of destruction these boys leave in their wake—and Pineapple Express, unlike its predecessor, boasts a significant body count—seems disproportionate to the prevailing mood of dopey fun." OK, fair enough. But she describes this as "a moral thing". Well, no, actually, that's not a moral thing, that's an aesthetic thing, and indeed Stevens makes no moral argument about the movie whatsoever. I'm not disagreeing with Stevens's take on morality in film making-- she can feel however she wants to about that. I'm remarking on Stevens's genuine inability to understand that her own objection to the movie's violence because it doesn't fit with the rest of the movie isn't in any way a moral statement on the content of the movie. Once again, she's tried to come up with a deep statement about a movie and made herself look foolish in the process. When will Dana Stevens learn that the easiest way to look stupid is by constantly trying to look smart?

How is saying "Peace out" Saul's trademark sign off? Isn't that a totally common and unremarkable thing to say? I don't even remember him saying it more than once in the movie, and I watched it 6 hours ago.