Pineapple Express: A Review

Let’s be blunt.

Stoner movies have repetitively run the same storyline.

Two men love weed.

They smoke it.

They get high, think they have women, meander the streets looking for trouble. Eventually they find that drugs aren’t their only escape from their pathetic lives.

Then they find themselves.

In the end. With each other.

(All of this is usually more graphic, but I practice restraint).

Case in point, Pineapple Express can be no more than a Stepbrother movie with weed, right?

Especially with the likes of Seth Rogen and a seemingly out-of-place James Franco.

After all, the flick is named after rare marijuana that by smoking it, is like “killing a unicorn.”

Franco and Rogen do have an odd chemistry that is at times “flabbergasting” and “weird,” especially when Franco says that antagonist Jones will “hunt them with heat-seeking missiles and barracudas.”

The cluelessness of the pair contribute to the situationally ironic set, and with Danny “thug life” McBride – the ball bouncing, bong throwing, telephone-toilet saving, ashtray smashing dope dealer comes a gun-ho Daewoo man-slaughterer that truly makes the three a dynamic trio.

The incorporation of exploding barns, underground weed cafes, and blind car chases, capped by inexplicable decision-making in between, gives Pineapple Express the ride that won’t be soon forgotten.

And unlike Stepbrothers, at least the characters aren’t five-year-olds taking a hit on that Pineapple Express.