DVD: Pineapple Express

By: Eli Turner Posted: January 11, 2009

More Weed Than a Snoop Dogg Concert

This may come as a shock to you (and I know that's what she said), but Pineapple Express is not actually a hilarious stupid stoner movie. It's a hilarious stupid stoner action movie parody. It was not billed as a parody, but if you watch it with this in mind, you will see many ridiculous action movie cliches parodied almost constantly. It's not as much of a direct parody as Walk Hard is, but it is almost as good in its lampooning.

First, the characters are the least likely characters that could ever succeed in an action movie. Action movies are all about running and gunning and surviving and killing bad guys to save the day. Smoking pot is about watching Family Guy for four hours, taking a nap, then smoking another bowl and playing Xbox until two in the morning. Maybe there's some eating in there, too, and maybe you pop a few nerds on Xbox Live, but that's the extent of violence in the typical stoner world barring some great catastrophe like your roommate putting the last bag of chips back into the cabinet empty or witnessing a murder and getting caught up in an organized crime ring. Oh wait.

Anyway, back to action parody. You don't really think of it in the semi-formalist world of action movies, but honestly, how many times can a person be shot before they die, or at least lose enough blood and/or muscles mass to be severely incapacitated? Even a Superbowl champ like Placixo Burress went to the hospital after a glancing blow in the thigh, and we all know he's got plenty of thigh meat left.

Even little moments are great cracks at action flick conventions. How many times has an action star run out of bullets only to immediately find a new fully-loaded gun within an arm's length? There is a brief but hilarious moment in this movie just like that.

Throughout most of the movie, Dale and Saul (Seth Rogen and James Franco) survive by going off what they've seen in action movies, with mixed results. Saul tries to kick out the windshield of a cop car and his foot gets stuck. They destroy their phones (or try to) so that the baddies can't track them. They sell pot to schoolkids to get money to skip town. Well, maybe Bruce Willis didn't do that last one in Die Hard 2, but he does get shot numerous times but still manages to survive to make two further sequels.

Whether or not your a stoner, you'll probably like this movie. I'm not a stoner anymore, and my wife hates pot, but we both enjoyed the comedy a lot. Watch it as a high-ass giggle movie, or watch it as a clever action-parody, but either way see this movie. But beware, Pineapple Express can a gateway to harder stuff. Sure it's fun now, but it won't be long before you're in deep despair suffering pointlessly, begging for death as you watch An American Carol and Disaster Movie for the eightieth night in a row.

Special Features:

Disc One:

• Filmmaker and Cast Commentary
• Deleted and extended scenes
• Gag reel

Disc Two:

• Rehearsal footage
• First table read
• Joe Lo Truglio's Art of the Social Butterfly
• Jonah Hill on Set
• Stuntmaster Ken Jeong
• Injury Report
• Red and Stormy's Guide to Marriage
• Raw footage