Pineapple Express Bluray Review
Main Feature
Two stoners find themselves on the run after one of them witnesses a drug-lord murdering a business rival. James Franco plays drug-dealer Saul Silver and Seth Rogen pretty much plays himself but for the sake of this review his character is named Dale Denton. I must point out that I believe there’s a difference between articulate and reasonably intelligent stoners who do silly things, a prime example is the wonderful The Big Lebowski, and the absolute morons of the highest order in Pineapple Express.
I’m not known for holding my cards close to my chest and I’ll tell you right now that I don’t find this very funny. This film drops so low that it turns to an overweight black female character for comedic value but I may well be on my own here as apparently many people find the inclusion alone to be hilarious. I have an admission to make, and I fully accept that it’s deemed sacrilegious to mention this fact, I happen to believe that Seth Rogen is quickly turning into a one-trick pony who plays exactly the same character in every film. James Franco was at one point touted as the “next big thing” in Hollywood and I must say that his performance in this is one of the few laughable things about the film. I find it difficult to watch any film starring Rosie Perez as in my mind her mediocre acting ability has always been ruined by her annoying screechy voice. Gary Cole who plays the drug-lord Ted Jones is a genuinely good actor but his talents are completely wasted here and this sadly reminds me of Christopher Walken’s career being littered with many unfortunate second fiddle roles.
The only bit I “laughed out loud” at is near the beginning when Dale is reacting to a conversation between his girlfriend and a handsome high-school Jock. Apparently Judd Apatow came up with the idea for this film while watching Brad Pitt’s short cameo performance in True Romance. It’s a damn shame he failed to take any inspiration from the Tarantino-penned script in that film because Pineapple Express would have been a lot better for it.
Extras
No matter how wonderful Extras are they will never result in a poor film having an excellent overall rating but they can definitely help. I genuinely hoped that the Extras on this disc would be so fantastic that I couldn’t avoid giving this a higher rating but that’s not the case at all.
The disc contains the Theatrical and Extended versions of the film but the difference is only five minutes and the additional footage doesn’t affect the narrative in any way.
The commentary seemed to be one big circle jerk from start to finish and everyone involved may as well have sat there and screamed “no, you’re the greatest” back and forth. I couldn’t find anything interesting in the deleted scenes which was disappointing as I always hope to find a gem amongst the understandably cut scenes.
A couple of Extras focus on snippets of dialogue which were tested and discarded in favour of slightly different and equally unfunny alternatives and this feels like a desperate attempt to pad out the disc.
Summary
I did not enjoy this film and at the end of the day I feel this is a poor imitation of Dumb and Dumber with added marijuana. Two bumbling fools somehow manage to be confused for Hitmen when all they’re capable of is bringing new meaning to the word incompetence. Most films of this ilk involve silly incidents which border on the plausible and at least have a noticeable structure but this strings together an absolutely ridiculous series of events in the hope that people will confuse dumb for funny. If part of the plan was to make the audience care about the characters I must be immune to their tactics as I don’t believe I could care less about any character in the entire film. I think it was very decent of the film-makers to include a disclaimer within the first five minutes of Pineapple Express – “(weed) makes shitty movies better”. Don’t believe the hype.
Rating **
