29/01/2011

Pineapple Express - 2008 USA d: David Gordon Green






This is the Judd Apatow Comedy Empire's attempt at Stoner Schtick, though it does rather improbably veer into action territory later on.  Seth Rogen revisits his affable loser persona once again and James Franco appears as his pot dealer, the pair finding themselves in serious trouble with the bad guys after Rogen's character witnesses a murder. And so it goes.

The film is not up to the quality of other Apatow connected comedies such as Superbad, Get Him To The Greek or The 40 Year Old Virgin, indeed it seems rather lazy and desperate in comparison with those films, but it does have its moments. Sadly they are too few and far between to sustain a film nearly two hours in length.  There is little depth to the characterisation and the story is perfunctory.  The action scenes are well done (a car chase particularly) and seem to stand out with the rest of the film just sort of draped apologetically around them.

A lot depends upon Seth Rogen.  If you buy into his being adorable and funny no matter what then this film will probably work for you, but I couldn't help but think that his lazy laurel resting was simply too much to take here.  He just runs through what made him famous, there is none of the additional depth he would add to his standard character in Zack And Miri Make A Porno here.  It's strictly a run through of old ground.

It's not a terrible film - it is well made and has some decent enough parts, but it just seems not to try very hard.  There's an air of "OK, we're done, that'll do you".  And with Apatow and associates having given us much better and funnier films, that simply isn't good enough.

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