Apatow and Rogen are Hurting America

Rating: 6/10 (6 August 2008)

Generally, I'm anti- stupid, vulgar comedies and I avoid them, partially out of intellectual/film snobbery and mainly because of moral convictions. I also don't like that I could never in good conscience recommend some of these movies to friends or family.
So it pains me a bit to say that Pineapple Express, the latest shindig from the Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen gang, was actually entertaining. I had fun watching this offensive, pot-smoking caper unfold, and director David Gordon Green (of whose Undertow I am a fan) steps up the cinematic quality by adding some visual storytelling style to what could be just another crude comedy.
Now, before you go rushing to the theatre, let me make it clear: Pineapple Express was funny, and thankfully, not overflowing with a vulgar sex-obsessed storyline, but it's another dumb pothead movie, regardless of the filmmakers' intentions. Star and co-writer Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) said in an interview that he didn't want want Pineapple Express to be just another pothead movie; he wanted to make pot-smoking more commonplace and accepted in films, citing The 40 Year Old Virgin, as the first of their ilk's films to insert scenes of nonchalant pot-smoking.
Pineapple follows Dale Denton (Rogen), a pot-smoking process server who buys a rare strain of marijuana called Pineapple Express from his needs-a-friend dealer, Saul (James Franco). One night while on a job, Dale witnesses a murder by a drug lord and a dirty cop, and accidentally drops his joint nearby as he flees the scene. Since the weed is so rare, he and Saul are easy to track down. And so the murderers are after them, hilarious hijinks ensue.
The story is reminiscent of other pot-infused, crime-comedy caper, buddy movies like The Big Lebowski, Half Baked, How High, etc. In that sense, it's not original. But there is a certain well-crafted quality to the movie, not in terms of story structure, but in the way it's put together. It could be the director, but whatever the case, it certainly makes it a different kind of stoner movie. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, though.
Funny and strange, filled with the regular cast of Apatow slacker schlubs, Pineapple Express continues in the vein of Super Bad and Knocked Up, revealing what's apparently going on the filmmakers' hormone-driven minds. Unfortunately, America may think that Apatow and Rogen speak for all men when they portray them as clubhopping, sex-obsessed, potheads who refuse to grow up  and that it's okay to be that way, because, as these movies suggest, all men really are like that. It may be obvious, but I feel the need to say that these guys don't speak for the rest.
It's unfortunate to think that this movie will probably enforce beliefs that it's totally okay to be high all the time, and that it's perfectly fine for grown men to act like they never matured passed third grade. Co-writers Seth Rogen (pro-weed) and Judd Apatow (anti-weed) reportedly disputed over the film's message regarding the use of pot. However, there is a somber moment in Pineapple where Dale and Saul get fed up with each other and life because of everything going wrong. The filmmakers get to slip in a "our lives suck because we're always high" moment which I think works, even if it's a sort of forgotten by the end.
Don't get me wrong, folks, I do actually see beautiful, poignant, sensitive messages amidst the overflow of offense in these vulgar movies, but there's too much release-of-pent-up-sexual-tension to consider them great movies. And it's not like everything is vulgar, there is plenty of clean material in Pineapple Express. But it's just the matter-of-fact lack of morality in both action and dialogue in the movie that bugs me when I reflect on the story.
I realize that these types of "chick flicks for guys" movies are exaggerated reflections of a hedonistic man-culture, and most of the content is so commonplace in that it no longer offends its target audience. Sadly, it is this adolescent mindset that views casual promiscuity and drug usage as common pastimes while tending to the more important activities of videogaming and beer-chugging. And somewhere in all this, sweet stories apparently can be found and made into movies. Movies with man-boy schmucks who take an extra 10 years after the teenage years to officially grow up. Movies that swim in vain and profane babblings, only to say, "See? We're men and we have feelings too." But surely there are other ways of telling the simply sweet messages of love, romance, and friendship that these movies try so hard to convey. Are there no writer-directors out there with more wit, class, and charm than those of the Apatow gang? Must we continue to endure the perverse teenage antics of men and women well into their 40s? Like all the Apatow-esquire movies, I may have been somewhat entertained, but mostly because of low-brow shock value appealing to the "primal" senses. There is a part of me that sees these types of movies like small silver coins embedded with poisonous impurities, rendering them without value. To remove all the impurities would take so much effort and time that it's just not worth it. Like that analogy that asks if you were offered some delicious brownies, but were warned that there were tiny pieces of dog poop in them  would you still eat the brownies? Would be okay with just a tiny bit of poop in your brownies? No? Seriously, though, it may be an entertaining, raucous joyride, but Pineapple Express is not a good movie, in the moral sense, nor is it a good-in-the-cinematic-sense either. But based on the filmmakers' track record, I'm sure people will flock to it regardless of some critic's opinion. Unfortunately, if Apatow/Rogen builds it, they will come.