Bummer

Rating: 3/10 (19 August 2008)

American film humor in this day and age is rife with stoner sensibility. Most film comedies with contemporary settings feature it's ubiquitous presence visually or in the writing. Still federally illegal, marijuana is treated with a wink and a nod and don't ask don't tell policy by most of society while a powerful elite (the liquor lobby?, the last remnants of Puritanism?) man the barricades to prevent it from destroying Western Civilization and their profit margin. Presidents, Vice Presidents, senators and congressmen all readily admit to it's usage at one time or another and beginning in the late sixties it replaced 3D glasses as an enhancement to the film experience transforming lame films (Plan 9 from Outer Space, Dragnet) into unintentional comedies. Many a Friday night my friends an I would pass a joint (along with a quart of a cheap vodka and orange juice concoction called Tango) back and forth in the balcony at the Palace theater in Providence, RI laughing and cheering Harpo, Groucho and Chico (we booed Zeppo)as comrades in arms mocking an uptight society. In the film Pineapple Express the stoners have been removed from the balcony and put on the screen. They should have stayed in their seats.
The film's title gets it's name from a super weed that is so potent and rare it gets one incessant toker to liken it to "killing a unicorn" when put to flame. It's rarity however gets our two dazed and confused protagonists Dale (Seth Rogen) and Saul (James Franco) in a fix when Dale witnesses a murder by a drug kingpin and a cop accomplice. The boys have a real reason to be paranoid now as they are being hunted by some radically violent dudes. For the final 90 minutes of this Cheech and Chong, action film hybrid the boys alternate between high chatter and graphic violence making for one incoherent mess. It quickly becomes a victim of it's own smugness and excess with it's one note repetitive theme that quickly loses potency after ten minutes.
Express has a patronising air and it's characters lack the charm and "wit" of weed icons Cheech and Chong who more clearly defined the stoner mentality and spirit. Rogen and Franco's indecipherable whining most of the film is a very poor substitute for the ideal high guy inflection exhibited by Tommy Chong in film and record and the movie itself going in circles gets tired very fast. Straight or stoned The Pineapple Express is one bad trip.