Apatow Magic Not Evident In This One

Rating: 6/10 (7 August 2008)

Let me begin by saying: I have loved Apatow Productions, and consider myself a huge fan of Superbad, Knocked Up, 40 Year Old Virgin, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and the like. They were funny comedies with great directing, solid acting, and usually a good moral to go with it.
However, this movie is not in a class with those. What made those movies special was that while they were hilariously funny while having substance. This one slipped, and while it was funny enough to not completely be a stinker, it was not what I was expecting from an Apatow produced comedy.
The movie starts out strong, and the chemistry between the two main characters, Dale Denton (Rogen) a stoner, and Saul Silver (Franco) a dealer, is almost flawless. As they slip deeper and deeper into a drug war between two local kingpins, Ted Jones (Gary Cole in an uninspiring role) and the "Asian" family, they become fugitives from both the law and the dealers.
While we're on the topic of the Asian family: the depiction of stereotyping can funny (if tasteless), but when your characters cease to be people and are only a stereotype, it can insult the intelligence of the viewers. In the case of those in my theater, no one thought that the stereotyping was funny at all, and most thought it thoroughly dumb.
As Saul and Dale run, trying to save their lives, we see Dale's 18 year old girlfriend, Angie (Amber Heard), and Saul's middleman, Red (Danny McBride) enter the picture. The viewer also sees the two hit-men sent by Ted to hunt down Saul and Dale, a presumably homosexual Budlofsky (Craig Robinson) and a very serious, "family-oriented" Matheson (Kevin Corrigan). Once again, the stereotype of homosexuals presented in the movie was just dumb, and I felt that as soon as the movie moved away from Saul and Dale, it stagnated and never really held my attention like the beginning.
In terms of acting performances, I absolutely loved Franco's portrayal of Saul Silver. He was absolutely hilarious, and everything he said elicited lots of laughs from the audience. Rogen's Dale Denton seemed a little uninspired, and his act as "an everyday loser" really ran thin on me in this one much more than it did in his other movies.
I thought the direction was unspectacular, and at many times it seemed like an amateur movie, not fit for the mainstream. While this has worked in the past with David Gordon Green's independent movies, it did not work here.
The movie was fine, but once again, not amazing in any sense of the word. It tried to make the "stoner-flick" acceptable for people who would not typically see a marijuana-themed movie by adding action and a very underdeveloped "buddy-theme." 6/10 Stars