Pineapple Express

Seth Rogen is the type of actor who simply plays himself. In "Knocked Up", there was a positive arc to the story where he plays a loser who must take on adult responsibilities and eventually grow up. In "Pineapple Express", he remains a loser and we can never believe in his journey since he's pitted against a bunch of unlikeable, unsavory comic book characters.

Rogen plays Dale Denton, a process server, who witnesses a murder by a drug dealer and then must elude the drug dealer's hired killers who are out to get him. His buddy marijuana dealer, Saul Silver, joins him as they elude the hit men. Right away you see how dumb the movie is when Denton is able to witness a murder which occurs inside a house in full view of anyone walking on the street. Another ridiculous moment occurs when Saul's marijuana supplier is shot point blank in the stomach but manages to survive and then is strong enough to drive Denton to the drug dealer's lair.

Of course those who wrote the movie undoubtedly will argue that the situations are supposed to be over the top and that's the humor of it. But there comes a point where there are so many scenes that are so ridiculous that one simply doesn't care about the characters anymore. Rogen and Franco do their Beavis and Butthead impersonations but their humor has no subtlety and relies mainly on slapstick to get by. There's a romantic subplot involving Denton's relationship with a girl who's a high school student but that fizzles completely especially at the end when the screenwriters forgot to tell us what happened between the two.

While this is supposed to be a somewhat good-natured farce about two guys who share a mutual love for marijuana, there's a lot of unnecessary violence with drug dealers killing one another during the finale. The ending undercuts the more good-natured scenes between the film's two protagonists.

If you check out the IMDb graph as to the age groups who liked this film, you will see that the older you are, you are less likely to like it. I feel certain that within five years, Seth Rogen will be a forgotten name within the movie industry unless he stops writing and acting in films such as this.