Pineapple Express (2008)

When it comes to comedy, I'm like a patchwork. My favourite kind is the one I grew up with which is the Looney Tunes cartoons. I can watch them over and over again, and I will always laugh. I also love dark British humour, slapstick, and wait for it.... American. American humour (especially these days) gets derided, most often due to it being "dumbed down" so the collegiate set can understand it, often using toilet humour as its best punchline. I somewhat disagree, I say that the humour people use between themselves is what drives movies made by Judd Apatow & co. Take Pineapple Express for example, this movie seems on some level to be fairly realistic. I use that term very loosely, because of course many things that happen in this film, could, and should never happen. Anyhow, the comedy, the dialogue, the fight sequences, and other interactions between the characters are the reasons I think make it feel this way. The fight sequences aren't ones that I could say seem all that choreographed, of course there are "X" spots they need to hit, but for the most part I think it is done on the fly, or like much of the comedy, improvised. Pineapple Express follows the story of a process server Dale Denton (Rogen), & his pot dealer Saul Silver (Franco), as they avoid henchmen (Robinson & Corrigan) of Ted Jones (Cole), Marijuana kingpin of L.A. after Dale witnesses a murder Ted commits. With a corrupt cop on the take (Perez) also on the hunt, staying alive for the buyer & supplier turned stoner buddies becomes an adventure of friendship as well as appreciation of the relationships built by people in this lifestyle. The name Pineapple Express comes from the name of the variety of weed Saul introduces to Dale. I enjoy this movie because of the old fashioned approach taken to deliver the laughs and the story, and the characters feel very relatable to almost anyone on some level.