Will Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow’s new flic deliver?
Stoner ... Action ... Comedy ... Wha?Directed by David Gordon Green. August 2008, USA. R: 111 min. (Originally published in buzz magazine on 7/31/2008)Pineapple Express, a stoner action/comedy by the same guys who wrote and produced Superbad (a brilliant instant-classic from 2007) and Drillbit Taylor
(a disappointment from earlier this year), is coming to theaters near
you on August 6. The film stars Seth Rogen as Dale Denton, a process
server with a weed habit, and James Franco (Harry Osborn from the
Spider-Man series) as Saul Silver, a pot dealer and discoverer of a new
strain of herb known as pineapple express, which he touts as “the
dopest dope [he’s] ever smoked.” While enjoying a nighttime toke in the driver seat of his old
beater, Dale happens to look into the second story window of a posh
mansion to witness a shooting. The perpetrator turns out to be a
crooked cop and drug lord who doesn’t take too kindly to the idea of
being caught red-handed ... which kind of begs the audience to ask,
“Why the hell didn’t he just close the drapes?” No matter; what’s done
is done, and soon the drug lord has turned his assassins on Dale, with
the roach of pineapple express he dropped at the scene as a lead. If
the trailer can serve as any kind of indication, hilarity and
explosions ensue. This new action-comedy direction — standing as a kind of
American answer to the success of the British duo of Edgar Wright and
Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) — will hopefully bode well for
Rogen and Apatow, both of whom took an unfortunate step in the wrong
direction with Drillbit Taylor. The movie, ultimately a watered-down,
PG-13ized version of Superbad, left me to question whether or
not Rogen had any good ideas left. I’m thinking those fears born of
March’s failure will be put to rest by early August’s success. |