Pineapple Express (2008)
★★★★ — Pineapple Express (2008)
Pineapple Express arrived in the summer of 2008 as something of a genre experiment, a film that takes the well-worn stoner comedy and grafts it onto a genuinely violent action-thriller chassis. The premise is straightforward enough: a regular cannabis user witnesses a corrupt cop commit a murder, and the trail leads back through his dealer to a dangerous criminal organisation. What follows is, depending on your tolerance for a certain kind of chaos, either an exhausting mess or one of the most entertaining films of that decade. It sits comfortably in the tradition of buddy comedies where the central relationship carries the whole weight of the picture, and it does so without much interest in playing things safe. The film was produced under Judd Apatow's banner alongside Columbia Pictures and Relativity Media, and carries the loose, improvisational energy that was very much the house style of Apatow Productions at the time. Running at 112 minutes, it never quite mistakes length for depth, but it does give its characters room to breathe in a way that shorter comedies rarely bother with.
The director is David Gordon Green, which remains one of the more surprising credits in mainstream Hollywood comedy. Green had built his early reputation on quiet, naturalistic dramas before pivoting sharply towards broad commercial fare, and Pineapple Express sits right at that crossroads in his career, retaining just enough genuine warmth to feel like something more than a studio product. The script was co-written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the same partnership behind Knocked Up, and you can feel that shared DNA throughout: the dialogue has a rhythm that sounds genuinely unscripted even when it isn't, and the jokes tend to arrive sideways rather than telegraphed. The action set pieces, meanwhile, are rougher and more brutal than you might expect from the poster, which is either a feature or a bug depending on what you came for.
Seth Rogen leads as Dale Denton, playing a variation on the perpetually put-upon everyman he had by that point made something of a speciality (see also his work in Paul). The more interesting performance, and the one most people remember, comes from James Franco as Saul Silver, a dealer of surprising philosophical warmth and complete practical uselessness. Franco was, at the time, still largely known for more serious dramatic work, and the comedy here has an almost gleeful quality to it, as if he found the whole thing as funny as the audience did. Gary Cole brings a convincing nastiness to the villainous Ted Jones, while Danny McBride, in a supporting role, delivers the kind of scene-stealing turn that would define much of his subsequent career. Rosie Perez rounds out the principal cast as a corrupt officer, polished but unremarkable in a role that the script never quite decides what to do with.
One of the funniest films of all time. Seth Rogen calling Joe Le Truglio a chimp F***ing little weirdo. Absolute cinema. It's a great all-star cast. It's written hilariously. It's touching. It's such a true to life story of the relationship between dealer and weed smoker. It's up there with Superbad for me as the funniest film of all time. Soundtrack is absolute fire too.
What sticks with me, beyond any individual gag, is how much genuine affection the film has for its two leads and the odd little world they inhabit together. That dealer-client dynamic, equal parts transactional and oddly fraternal, gives the whole thing a warmth that stops it tipping into mean-spirited territory even when the violence escalates. The soundtrack, as I said, is doing a lot of heavy lifting too, and it earns every note. If you came here looking for something with the choreographic precision of, say, The Raid 2, you will want to recalibrate your expectations entirely. But on its own terms, Pineapple Express is the kind of film you quote at people for years without meaning to. That's not nothing.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2008 | Watched: 2025-04-13
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Pineapple Express (2008) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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