Pineapple Express...

Rating: 6/10 (16 August 2008)

... is the new Apatow/Rogen effort, about a pair of stoners on the run from the city's drug lords. I had fairly high expectations from it, because I found Apatow's major projects (40 y.o. Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) to be all quite enjoyable. The reviews were mixed, leaning towards positive (I think it's something like 62% on Rottentomatoes), but I paid them no heed. Somehow I felt Apatow could do no wrong-no, I haven't seen Dewey Cox, Drillbit Taylor or Stepbrothers.
It was a bit disappointing. I was expecting a genre-typical, but high quality male bonding buddy comedy, like Superbad. From the looks of the trailers, that was how it was billed. This turned out to be a mistake, because it was rather, a rather ham fisted parody of the genre. You get the feeling that Apatow and Rogen have let the success get to their heads and decided to fore go the script editing process and instead indulge themselves in shoving in every drugs/stoner/male bonding movie cliché into its nearly 2 hour run time.
On average, every 5 to 10 minutes or so this formula pays off, and there are some genuinely funny moments- be warned though, a lot of them are the type that leave you raising your eyebrows and sharing looks of disbelief with your mates. In between though, there's a whole lot of unfunny, seemingly improv-ed dialogue riffing that was probably more enjoyable to write than to hear.
At heart, it's a fun B-grade movie parody in the tradition of Snakes on a Plane, and should not be regarded as anything more. I would call it self-aware, but only as far as stoners are self-aware. Worth a rental, but you might want to spare your money for the cinema unless your friends are dragging you along.
3/5