Pineapple Express

The Judd Apatow comedy mill has a sterling reputation for delivering the funny. Not so much for delivering cinematic virtuosity. Movies like The 40-Year Old Virgin and Superbad are undoubtedly brilliant comedies, and even contain powerful emotional beats, but no one remembers the technical filmmaking. That's as it should be: comedy isn't a director's genre. In an Apatow production, all the director generally has to do is get as much coverage as possible for the free-form riffage of the actors and let the editor turn it into something coherent.

In what is in many ways the most ambitious production yet to come out of Apatownia, Seth Rogen and writing partner Evan Golberg have written an action comedy about potheads on the run. Action, unlike comedy, is very much a director's genre and it's to the great credit of Apatow and company that they were aware enough of the limitations of their inert, sitcomy house style to look outside of their fraternity for a director. David Gordon Green's directing job on Pineapple Express is a remarkable balancing act. For the most part, he sticks to unobtrusive two camera set-ups that allow Seth Rogen, playing a process server who witnesses a murder, and James Franco, his constantly-baked pot dealer, to play off of each other in a relationship that deepens as the film progresses, while still featuring tons of truthful, funny moments. When it comes to the action sequences, Green tightens his grip on the material, delivering some genuine ass-kicking scenes while maintaining a light tone, like Walter Hill with a smaller dick. He even finds a few moments to indulge in the sort of charming, time-out-of-time reveries that mark his previous efforts like All the Real Girls.

The story is a by-now-familiar Apatowian bromantic comedy, with Rogen realizing that the pot dealer he had previously kept at arms length is really the best friend he has in the world. What makes the film distinctive is the action movie gloss. Like last year's Hot Fuzz, Pineapple Express satirizes the conventions of action movies while simultaneously providing plenty of earnestly awesome action movie fun. The self awareness of the characters is what makes the comedy. Not only are the stoned schlubs on display wholly unfit for action hi jinx, they know that they are hopelessly out of their element, giving the shootouts, car chases, and fight scenes an absurd edge. At the same time all these ridiculous action hysterics are staged with a riotous energy that works together with the reaction shots and pained awkwardness to heighten the comedy and the excitement. This synergy is on perfect display in a fight scene between Franco and Rogen and a drug dealer played by Danny McBride that is both goofy and undeniably badass. The self awareness extends beyond the characters: late in the film there's a bit of shamelessly raunchy physical comedy between Rogen and Franco that parodies the latent homoeroticism of the buddy action genre, but also dramatizes the logical endpoint of the Apatowian bromance.

Score: 8.0