An excuse to smoke copious amounts of marijuana on film

Rating: 4/10 (28 February 2015)

Ever since I watched 'This is the End' I have been itching to see Pineapple Express (namely because they film a 'sequel' in that film). So, when the local cult movie cinema decided to run a double feature of The Interview and this film I was there with bells on. However, to my dismay, Pineapple Express simply did not live up to my expectations. Okay, it wasn't a bad film per se, however it certainly wasn't one of Rogan's best. To me it seemed to be little more than an excuse of having copious amounts of marijuana being smoked on film.
Okay, this was probably one of his first films, which is probably why it didn't appeal to me all that much, but I suspect if I was a lot younger, and still hanging around a certain crowd, we would have lapped this film up. The reason being because it was, well, an excuse for smoking copious amounts of marijuana on the big screen. However, unlike a lot of his other films, I didn't think that it was all that funny. Okay, while Rogan's comedy tends to be quite puerile, that puerile part of me simply cannot help but laughing, yet that did not seem to be present in this film.
Pineapple Express is basically about marijuana. Well, it's not about marijuana in the sense that Acapulco Gold is about marijuana, but rather it is about a strain of really potent marijuana that gets our uninspiring heroes into a lot of trouble. Rogan plays a process server (a job that seems really cool, but pays pittance) and his comrade in arms is, well, a drug dealer. Anyway, Rogan is going to serve some guy named Ted Jones, who as it turns out is a big time drug dealer, but gets into trouble when he witnesses Jones and a female cop (that's her name) kill some Asian guy. Rogan flees, but leaves his doobie lying on the ground which means that Jones is able to track Rogan and his friend down because it is, well, Pineapple Express, and Ted has only sold Pineapple Express to one guy.
Thus this is what the movie becomes – a couple of no hopers stumbling around Los Angeles trying to keep themselves alive while attempting to get the better of the villain. Sound familiar? Well, that is because it is familiar since it is the basic plot of quite a few other films that I have seen. Okay, those films may not have the main characters smoking as much marijuana as they do in this film, but in the end if that is what sets this film apart from the multitude of other films with a similar plot then, well, all I can say that it is not all that fantastic.