And now for something completely different, more or less, from the Judd Apatow money printing machine consortium of movie makers with ‘Pineapple Express’, a stoner action comedy thriller, which could very well be a genre all unto itself.

Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) is master of disguise process server who spends the majority of his spare time, and his work time for that matter, getting stoned. On those rare occasions when Dale isn’t baked or in the process of getting baked, he’s extolling the glorious virtues of marijuana to whomever he can get to listen to him. After going to the local high school to visit his girlfriend Angie (Amber Heard), yes Dale who is in his mid-twenties has a high school aged girlfriend, our hero finds that situation to be a bit stressful and has to make a quick visit to his hookup because his supplies are getting a low. As a bit of a side editorial, we may question post graduate aged dudes dating high school chicks, even if they do look like Amber Heard. It also doesn’t help that Seth Rogen, who I believe is actually around twenty five or so, looks like he’s closer to thirty eight.

Anyways, Dale makes his way over to his pot dealer Saul (James Franco), who is quite the character in that he spends his days sitting in his apartment dreaming up new and clever ways to smoke weed and watching ‘227’ on the tube. This is Dale’s lucky day because Saul has just received a new shipment of weed codenamed Pineapple Express that is awesome in ways that only my man Saul can describe. After getting toked up on this high quality depressant, or stimulant depending on your physiological makeup, Dale still has a job to do and is on his way serve a summons to one T. Jones. Saul makes the casual observance that his main supplier is also a T. Jones, but what are the chances that these two dudes could be one and the same? As we all well know, those chances are a guaranteed 100 percent.

So Dale is outside the plush loft of one Ted Jones (Gary Cole) smoking as per usual when he sees Ted and his cop lover Carol (Rosie Perez) off some Asian dude which causes Dale to panic, toss his roach out the window and flee. Dale’s noisy exit is heard by Ted and Carol who recognizes his product being tossed and now sets about the task of tracking and killing this witness to his little murder. Now the movie kicks into full adventure mode as Dale grabs his drug dealing buddy and the two set about making all kinds of ill advised decisions under the influence while being chased by a couple of wisecracking hitmen. Hilarity, lots of weed smoking, selling drugs to underage high school kids and explosions shall ensue.

So my good friend L.A. Pete saw this movie before I did and informed me that he didn’t care it for it much. He also was of the opinion that the movie had, in his words, ‘alotta gay shit’ in it. Now that’s Pete talking and not me so take it up with him. Though I SERIOUSLY wouldn’t recommend that. Now I must gently disagree with my buddy because I did enjoy the movie more than he did, though probably not as much as the surprising critical acclaim that it is garnering, but to Pete’s point there are more than a few, how do we say, instances of man on man ‘bonding’ in this movie. I would almost call this movie a ‘romantic comedy’ in a sense as drug addict finds best friend, drug addict loses best friend, and then drug addict does everything in his power to get his best friend back even at the sacrifice of his super hot high school girlfriend. Yeah there was a scene of our two main characters humping each other for what seemed like forever but then what man amongst us here hasn’t dry humped a good friend on occasion?  Oddly enough, not a lotta hands going up right now.

But enough already about the not so latent homosexuality embedded in this film as a lot of the goodwill being extended to ‘Pineapple Express’ is because of it’s young hot indi darling director David Gordon Green. Of course I mean ‘hot’ by his career being on fire so let’s not trip. Green takes what is basically a run of the mill buddy action flick and gives it a little something extra to make it more palatable than most. What exactly that something is I don’t rightly know, but ‘Pineapple Express’ did have a cool fresh vibe running through it. James Franco who I normally see playing moody depressed dudes virtually claims the film as his own as the free spirited Saul and his performance alone is almost worth the price of admission. Seth Rogen isn’t exactly Marlon Brando, but he does seem to know how to play cynical, aimless potheads reasonably well. After listening to Mr. Rogen conversate with Terry Gross on ‘Fresh Air’ a few weeks back, I think I can safely sat that the next time Seth Rogen plays a character outside himself will probably be the first time, but it works quite well here. On a side note I was once publicly dressed down by some sister for using the word ‘conversate’ in a sentence.  It is not a word.

Like a lot of these Apatow joints the peripheral characters really help make this movie shine such as Danny McBride, who is making a career out being a funny peripheral character, and Craig Robinson who always manages to do wonders with throwaway roles, this time as the hitman, though not quite as inspired as his single scene in ‘Knocked Up’. I see that Mister Robinson has been busted by the evil L.A. cops for having some drugs in his ride. He should’ve told those sucker ass pigs that he was simply doing research for this role.

No, there’s nothing particular unique or special about ‘Pineapple Express’ as I found it to be, at its core, your typical gay buddy action flick. But it did manage to make me laugh on numerous occasions which is all I wanted, and I got what I wanted.