Pineapple Express

“You just got killed by a Daewoo Lanos, mother*ucker!” is the only line that made me laugh out loud. Even though it was produced by Judd Apatow, it’s extremely unfunny. And not because I don’t get stoner humor or that Seth Rogen and James Franco don’t look convincing enough with a joint, and the same goes for Danny McBride and a shotgun, but because the script is so forced, it is literally painful. (10/02/2009)

Ingenious, madcap hodgepodge. We’ve all seen stoned nut-jobs before, but they were never this nice or this funny. Rogen and Franco have no trouble entertaining us and the twists were obviously written by stoners. A myriad of unbelievable characters, an awesome chase with a foot in a window and a really bloody finale that looks like Vietnam with all that grass. Just more consistent dosage is lacking, otherwise great. (09/07/2013)

An outstanding cast, a couple of side-splitting scenes, an excellent opening half hour and corners of the mouth lifting here and there for the rest of the movie. But what good is not taking itself seriously and spot on mockery of buddy action pictures when it backfires due to unnecessary length. Just a classic project from Apatow production studios. Cutting twenty minutes wouldn’t have done any good in the end. To make things better, it would need at least twice as much material on the cutting room floor. Including the action finale which is like out of a completely different movie. Which wouldn’t matter if it had been a good movie. But that wasn’t the case. Plus it’s d-r-a-w-n--o-u-t so much that it dethrones the Return of the King with its never-ending stream of endings. The Rogen, Franco and Robinson trio simply doesn’t have a chance to pull the Pineapple Express along, however hard they try. Clouds of marihuana smoke can’t hide everything. And not even smoking a “Christmas time" joint before switching on. (21/10/2008)

Pineapple Express in bullet points: 1) It's like watching your stoner buddies who won’t even give you a puff and you realize how much you actually hate them. Not for being stingy, but kind of in general. 2) All the characters here, except the main duo, are absolutely horribly written, their relationship sort of sketched out but supremely dysfunctional (the gangster and the cop – WTF?), so you either hate them (in the way you hate a complete stranger who accidentally bumps into you on the sidewalk and doesn't say anything) or you don't give a shit about them and you're just pissed that they're occupying the overlong running time 3) absolutely terrible editing, which imho was caused by one of the main characters reliably stumbling in the dialogue and dragging the action scenes (both of them – and bad ones), which implies 4) the film has NO dynamics – the dialogue feels improvised, which is a detriment here, the motion jokes escalate absolutely wretchedly (unlike the excellent trailer), and for every good joke there's ten minutes of wallowing in shit 5) if you’re making a comedy about stoners, you should focus on the contrasts and clashes between the world behind the green curtain and the normal world, not the "when a reindeer meets a reindeer" method. 6) So as not to just throw stones, Pineapple Express isn't completely stupid garbage, it does have its scripted strong moments, like the heroes arguing in the style of "Your wannabe sucks, my wannabe is better", but the filmmakers don't seem to be too amused by that so they go back to the original concept of "Hey dude... moth" – so we're back to point one. 7) Apatow could use some friends already. (08/11/2012)

Entertaining, but often too over the top. Unlike many others, I don't think the are doing a good job when they mindlessly throw the main characters into a whirlwind of situations so exaggerated and implausible that their occurrence is explained at most by the proliferation of the titular addictive substances even among the actively thinking members of the crew. Not to mention the fact that half of these scenes are not half as funny as they deserve and we expect... But even so, I can imagine much, much worse shit ;) 60% (21/04/2012)