Loopy Stoner Comedy Hijinks and Quentin Tarantino-Level Action Make for a Guy-Friendly Free-for-All

Rating: 6/10 (11 August 2008)

Co-written by star Seth Rogen and his partner Evan Goldberg, the ramshackle dialogue is familiar from any of the comedies from the Judd Apatow factory. The funniest bits are the throwaway lines delivered by Rogen as Dale Denton, a carefree process server who smokes reefer all day, dreams of being a radio talk-show host, and has a relationship with a high school girl named Angie. The movie's title refers to the new and powerful weed strain that Dale buys from a sweet-natured, likeably loopy dealer named Saul Silver. Both are quickly on the lam after Dale witnesses a grisly murder at the hands of criminal drug lord Ted Jones and his corrupt cop lover Carol. They try to elicit help from Saul's shifty but hilariously obtuse friend Red, but he rats on them to a pair of hit-men who are in hot pursuit of the comic pair.
I have to admit that the film starts rather unpromisingly as a stoner comedy with a somewhat unsavory element in the romance Dale has with his underaged girlfriend. However, it picks up considerable comedy steam when Dale and Saul become paranoid as much from their excessive smoking as their on-the-run situation. Director David Gordon Green, a filmmaker known more for his indie work like "George Washington", also brings a refreshing human element to key moments within the escalating shenanigans, especially when the bond between Dale and Saul becomes hilariously intractable. It also becomes clear that Dale's relationship with Angie is based on his emotional immaturity versus a Lolita complex.
As Dale, the schlubby Rogen is really doing nothing different here than he did in "Knocked Up", though his baseline character's object of affection has shifted discernibly from a beautiful entertainment reporter to a dealer and his doobies. An actor etched in my memory for his startling turn as James Dean in the 2002 telepic, a stringy-haired James Franco manages to be funny and intriguingly poignant in an off-kilter way. The scene stealers, however, turn out to be Danny McBride (the suspicious brother in last year's "The Heartbreak Kid"), who survives every action-thriller cliché imaginable, and Craig Robinson (the hilariously observant nightclub bouncer in "Knocked Up") as the overly sensitive hit-man Matheson. Left far to the sidelines are Gary Cole not nearly interesting enough as Jones and a strangely cast Rosie Perez acting quite butch as Carol.
Ed Begley, Jr., has a funny bit as Angie's beleaguered dad, and Ken Jeong (the obnoxious ob-gyn in "Knocked Up") shows up as one of the ninjas from the Asian crime syndicate. Overlong at 110 minutes, the movie shifts gears into Quentin Tarantino territory during the last third - first with a predictably wild car chase scene and then the particularly over-the-top mayhem at the grow house where the Pineapple Express is harvested. As a silly overture, the opening black-and-white scene, set seventy years prior, has Bill Hader as a soldier smoking copious amounts of marijuana to test his mettle, but make no mistake that this is at heart a stoner buddy film, a point made clear by the film's hangover scene in the diner. There's a lot of funny stuff in this film, and much of it is well-played, but the audience is clearly pre-determined by the subject. If you are repelled by the thought of watching guys getting high for nearly two hours, then I say just skip it.