Great director helms stoner comedy (What!?!?)

Pineapple Express is a true stoner comedy if only because you have to be fully baked out of your skull to enjoy it, which is perhaps why I was left a little confused by the whole thing.

Toasted or not, though, its premise is kind of ingenious: after witnessing a murder, a pothead and his dealer are tracked down because the pot they smoke is so rare — “It’s so rare I kinda feel guilty smoking it, like killing a unicorn” — that the murderers know exactly where score some more. If Step Brothers, last month’s Judd Apatow comedy, were set up with a story half as interesting as this I might have liked it more. Then again, if Pineapple Express were half as funny as Step Brothers, I might have liked it more, too. So maybe Mr. Apatow isn’t as sturdy as I’d like to think.

Seth Rogen plays Dale Denton, a process server who uses a variety of disguises in his trunk to say “you got served” (in a strictly non-urban way) to unsuspecting citizens of Los Angeles. One evening he tries to serve a well-connected drug dealer but ends up witnessing a drug hit that inexplicably takes place against a large, well-lit picture window that overlooks a busy street — not very smart, but then again they only deal pot. Of course, Dale was blazing up in his car, so before he leaves terrified he throws what’s left of his Spike Lee joint out the window. Later the murderer picks it up, takes a drag and recognizes the flavor — “Pineapple Express,” he snarls.

The only person who deals Pineapple Express, the choicest of herb, is Saul Silver (James Franco), a loser who samples way too much of his own product. He spends his days watching The Jeffersons in sweat pants and blasting through baggy after baggy of green stuff as he serves his customers, including Dale. Some customers linger unnecessarily after their purchases, which irks Saul, but then Dale shows up and Saul forces him to linger, and hey, let’s smoke this cross joint that requires three hands to light. Saul’s pad, besides featuring all kinds of hiding spots for his weed, is decorated with irony in mind, including a poster of “Footprints,” that religious poem, and then a train set on his bed — only in a pothead’s place.

Dale shows up and talks Saul into disappearing for bit while this murder thing blows over, but the two blunder their escape and end up careening from one dangerous encounter to the next as they unwittingly — as opposed to wittingly — start a drug feud with the murderers, who are also Saul’s supplier, and an Asian gang Saul can only call the Viet Cong. “They’ll track us with heat-seeking missiles, bloodhounds, foxes, barracudas,” Saul states proudly in a foggy high.

It all leads to a rather elaborate, and way too long, shootout at a drug barn, where Dale recognizes all the plants: “Purple Nurple, Northern Lights, Blue Oyster, Sticky Afghan … I’ve gone to heaven.” By this time Saul and Dale, who have bonded in an almost gay way, have to prove themselves to each other by fighting the drug dealers with guns, military tactics and interrogation techniques — all things way too complex for two stoners, which I guess is the comedy element.

The characters, albeit colorful, are one-trick ponies. The routine with them getting high and saying foolish things gets old pretty quick, but the average pothead will be tickled green to have smoke buddies to giggle with. Rogen’s humor, dulled by his drug of choice, isn’t as sharp or as inventive as it was in Knocked Up or Superbad. His Dale character is given a girlfriend still in high school, which provides some awkward moments when he goes to her house for dinner — although her dad, played by Ed Begley Jr., never questions the illegal romance.

Franco is funny if only because he’s been too serious in all his other movies, like Spider-Man where he moped around frustrated with himself. There’s a whole business with Saul trying a movie cliché by kicking out a windshield while he’s driving. The result is hilarious and Franco seems to be having fun. Most of all, though, the jokes just fall very flat. Yes, Dale and Saul are very high, but it’s not as funny as it would seem.

Yet again, though, one of the best performances is by Danny McBride, who has the potential to steal the show away from every movie he’s in, from The Heartbreak Kid to Drillbit Taylor to the upcoming Tropic Thunder. Here he plays a drug middleman who’s hopelessly stuck in the ’80s and shaves his armpits so he can be “aerodynamic in a fight.” He’s given one of the better lines of the movie: “Herpes is for life, bro.” I couldn’t tell you the context in which it’s said, but it’s great nevertheless.

What’s most shocking about Pineapple Express, besides its frank depiction of marijuana and Seth Rogen’s misfiring jokes, is that art-house director David Gordon Green is running the show. Green’s Undertow, All the Real Girls and George Washington set him up as one of America’s premier young filmmaking talents, whose works were introspective and poetic, and involved the viewer on explicit, almost personal, levels. Here he abandons all poetry and tokes up a mindless stoner rant that blows out the window. And in response to Roger Ebert’s question — “What would happen if a movie like this was made by a great director?” — the answer is this: an only semi-bad bad movie.

Here’s my biggest complaint: stoner comedies can be horrible, mindless movies, but because they’re about pot they’re somehow exempt from criticism because of the subject matter. Other critics are giving this sloppy kisses and half-heartedly acknowledging that, yes, this is a pretty good achievement for a stoner comedy. Agreed, but just because stoner comedies have low expectations doesn’t mean I should too.

And potheads are so not picky when it comes to entertainment. Why else would people buy into bands like Slightly Stoopid or Kottonmouth Kings or any of the last five or six Cypress Hill albums? Even Reefer Madness, which has found a revival in the stoner crowd, is pretty idiotic once you look past its historical film context. In a sense, pot-themed entertainment is its own genre if only because potheads are the only ones enjoying it.