Decent comedy, but a step down from some previous Rogen/Apatow outings

Rating: 6/10 (9 August 2008)

Pineapple Express was OK. That's pretty much how I felt about it. It was funny, and I laughed often enough, but the humor was frequently based upon the use of bad language or shock humor, and I found myself wondering too many times whether I'll find a lot of what I laughed at humorous the second time around. Unlike Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, or even Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, the dialogue here didn't seem very clever or quotable, and the plot just wasn't that compelling.
This is the story of Dale Denton (Rogen), a process server and marijuana super-user who witnesses a murder committed by a powerful drug dealer (Bill Cole) and a corrupt cop (Rosie Perez) and must go on the run once they track him down through his drug dealer, Saul (James Franco, in his best casting ever) thanks to a rare type of weed called Pineapple Express.
For a while, the movie thrives upon its buddy-comedy conventions, and thanks to good work from Rogen, Franco, and a somewhat brilliant turn by Danny McBride as Saul's supplier/pseudo-friend. Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson also brighten up the screen as bickering hit men. However, in its final third or so, the film degenerates into a violent action showdown that is as unfunny as it is tonally inappropriate to this film. Though this worked brilliantly in a similar way in Hot Fuzz, that film sets you up for it from the very beginning, whereas in this film it just comes out of nowhere.
Parts of this movie really work, such as Dale's relationship with an 18-year-old high schooler (Amber Heard) and the hilarious scenes with McBride's Red, but this movie seems too confused as to what it hopes to be to successfully be anything. I'll stick to Superbad and the others, and hope that the next outing will be better.