I’ve actually never been high in my life.

Never saw the appeal and never really went that way with my choices. I’ve never drank, either, for that matter. And while we are at it, I haven’t had any real amount of caffeine in about twenty years. I’m a blast; invite me to all of your parties! But the point is, stoner comedies don’t particularly jive with me. They aren’t wildly relatable to me, and I tend to think they are often lazily written to appeal to a low common denominator. Or, at least, to appeal to people who aren’t wildly discerning in their entertainment medium tastes.

The only one that ever really landed with me and became a flick I have happily rewatched several times is Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. I always found that movie to be smartly written and brilliantly acted by John Cho and Kal Penn. I kind of love it, even if its not really being aimed at me.

But despite there having been that one hit, I certainly don’t actively seek out these works. So I had never before seen Pineapple Express. As years passed and I had heard more about how much people seemed to dig it, I ended up putting it on my Watchlist. But it fell into being one of those movies I frequently skipped to check out other, newer additions.

Pineapple Express is the story of a stoner process server named Dale. He lives a fairly innocuous life of getting high and dating his high school girlfriend. One night after picking up a new, super potent strain of weed from his dealer, Saul, Dale finds himself witnessing a murder, partially committed by a cop. In a panic, Dale returns to his dealer and the two realize that the killers might narrow their scope to Saul, so the two of them go on the run.

As the days wear on, the stoner and his dealer go to ever more drastic circumstances to stay alive!

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Pineapple Express is laugh out loud funny at points, and it really gave me some joy to watch. I was not particularly expecting to have my socks knocked off; it’s not typically my style of comedy—I am not a stoner movie kind of guy, as noted above—but this worked for me. Especially Seth Rogen, who is often a riot. He is the standout here. Especially when this movie initially dropped, I was not a fan of his body of work; it wouldn’t be until 2011’s 50/50 where my opinion on him changed.

 It’s a shame (for many reasons!) that James Franco ended up being a real piece of shit in real life, because his chemistry with Rogen is unimpeachable. These two would still be doing movies together until the heat death of the universe, and many of them would still be plenty of entertaining, if not for his indiscretions.

+ The switch up to being a straight action-comedy in the third act really ends up working, and some of the fight scenes are incredibly humorous. Honestly, some of the best laugh beats are part of the brawls at the end of Pineapple Express. No one is going to confuse this movie with a Hot Fuzz or a Lethal Weapon, but it’s still funny and has some good action beats. 

There are some moments of action excitement earlier, prior to the third act. There is even a cop car chase scene which is, again, hilarious. But it’s all nothing compared to how the picture wraps up. We get explosions and machine gun fire and fist fights; Rogen and Franco had to have thought they were in heaven getting the budget to film such a bombastic movie.

– Pineapple Express is simply too long for what it is, and it drags in the middle a bit when some fabricated conflict breaks up Saul and Dale for a while. You could trim 20 minutes here and have a tighter, more enjoyable movie. As much as I was laughing when the outing was working, there were runs of it where I was just yawning and waiting for something of note to happen. This thing is almost two hours long! And while that’s not unheard of for an action comedy–again, referring to my favorite movie ever, Hot Fuzz, that one is over two hours–I thought Pineapple Express had some areas that could have been left on the cutting room floor.

– This can’t be a brand new revelation of anything among people who have seen this offering, but I was shocked to see that the fact that Dale was dating a high school girl doesn’t end up going anywhere or resolving at all. We don’t see him come out the other side as a better, more mature person. He just… was dating an 18 year old at the start. I know I mentioned you could cut twenty minutes, and here it is! No one would miss this subplot.

I figure this is included to show Dale’s arrested development as a stoner character with no drive or real maturity, but like I said… there’s no pay-off to it besides a quick phone call he makes to his girlfriend. He begs her to take him back, and when she agrees and says she wants to marry him, he gets scared off and explains that it’s because she’s immature. But that’s played off as more of joke about her proposing the idea of marriage.

It all just adds up to Dale feeling like a scuzzier character than I think the film intends for him to be.

OVERALL

I found Pineapple Express to be a much funnier picture than I was thinking it might end up being. As I alluded to early on, this is not the kind of movie I am typically super into–and I wasn’t big on Rogen in this era–so I thought this would be something that just kind of went under me. But, no; I quite enjoyed this for what it is.