Entertainment, Movies - Navy Times

Review: ‘Pineapple Express’ smells like a hit

The career of James Franco has always struck me as a classic example of hype over heft.

After his dark, chiseled good looks first got him noticed almost a decade ago as Daniel Desario on the short-lived cult TV show “Freaks and Geeks,” someone got the idea that he could be the next James Dean, whom he was cast to portray in a 2001 TV biopic.

But Franco never quite caught fire, and has spent the past seven years brooding and mumbling in lead roles in forgettable films like “Annapolis” and “Flyboys,” and playing second banana to Tobey “Spider-Man” Maguire.

But he may finally have found a role to bust him out of his career straightjacket: spacey but good-hearted pot dealer Saul in “Pineapple Express,” the first truly classic stoner comedy of the new millennium (sorry, Harold and Kumar).

The flick is yet another slice of absurdity from the relentlessly productive Judd Apatow and pals Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

As befits a story about stoners and the weed that stones them, it always seems on the verge of coming unhinged. Many scenes and much dialogue feel wholly ad-libbed — and this loose, anarchic vibe only adds to the film’s subversively loopy charm.

The film opens with a scene shot in black and white that looks like something out of the 1950s Cold War era and features a riotous bit of improv by Bill Hader (one of the wacky cops in Apatow’s “Superbad”).

Then we’re in the present, meeting dedicated dopehead Dale (Rogen), a twentysomething shlub who ekes out a living as a process server and is inexplicably dating a hot blond high school senior (Amber Heard) whom he takes completely for granted — when he’s not too high to remember that he has a girlfriend.

After a few set-up scenes, Dale heads over to visit Saul, his dealer, to stock up on smoke.

From the moment he first appears on screen, Franco is simply a riot as a sweetly goofy airhead who says he’s only dealing weed until he can save enough money to get his beloved grandma into a good nursing home, after which he plans to become a civil engineer and design septic tanks for playgrounds so kids always have a place to do their doody.

Of course.

Saul’s latest groove thing is the eponymous weed of the film’s title, the potent virtues of which he extolls in a hilariously blasphemous turn of phrase. No need to give Dale the hard sell; he’s in for a quarter.

That night, toking up near the home of his next subpoena mark, Ted Jones (Gary Cole), Dale sees Ted and a uniformed cop (Rosie Perez) murder an Asian man in cold blood.

Dale freaks out, accidentally drops his half-smoked joint and screeches away. But it turns out Ted is the main man behind the Pineapple Express, and he’s been exclusively supplying Saul via a middleman named Red (the sublimely unctuous Danny McBride). So when Ted recognizes the distinctive aroma of Dale’s lost joint, he knows just who to start hunting down.

Here’s where Apatow, Rogen and Goldberg hatch a minor stroke of genius: morphing their heretofore mellow stoner comedy into a pot-powered action adventure. Yes, it’s “Up in Smoke” meets “Die Hard” as Dale, Saul and Red make like Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis to navigate the wicked crossfire of a weed war between Ted’s outfit and a rival Asian gang.

And the fact that all three remain in a state of panicky, deep-fried paranoia throughout their ordeal doesn’t exactly boost their survival odds.

Yes, it’s all utterly ridiculous. But beneath the hazy shenanigans is a surprisingly endearing tale of friendship, as Dale, Saul and Red, who start out with nothing in common except reefer love, end up BFFs on the far side of their life-altering adventure.

Large swaths of Octoplex Nation will dismiss the whole thing out of hand. But I’m betting fans of this kind of stupid-funny fare — and you absolutely know who you are — will turn out in sufficient numbers to make “Pineapple Express” another sweet-smelling Apatow success.

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