| PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (2008) : D.G.Green : 6/10 : full review online, SAT.13.SEP. |
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 In Christ and the High Priest (ca. 1937), Rouault's vigorous linear marks imply hands, recessed eyes, and bodily contours, always with economy and incompleteness, no matter how many successive restatements have been amassed on top of one another. The high priest himself seems to have wandered in from a Francis Bacon canvas, with his squirming, plasticized flesh and improbable bright-orange triangular nose. The background shifts under your eye; pastel-blue shapes that appear to be the vague manifestation of the Holy Spirit rise behind the savior, emerging against a background of red and black slashes in one corner, orange and turquoise clouds in another. The two carelessly gestural central figures manage, for all of their willed flatness, to communicate weight and substance. Yet they vacillate mysteriously, both advancing from and receding into a haze of mystical indeterminacy. Washington City Paper, 2004  Among the credits for amiable stoner comedy/action-movie Pineapple Express is the information that Georges Rouault's 1937 painting Christ and the High Priest [>>] has been shown on screen. Only Rouault acolytes, or eagle-eyed viewers, will be able to pinpoint exactly when and where this occurs, as the film - unlike, say, Guy Ritchie's Rocknrolla - in no way makes any fuss about any particular work of art. The inclusion of a Rouault may seem incongruous touch in what's ostensibly a dopey druggy romp in the tradition of Dude, Where's My Car? or Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies - but not so much when you realise that it's directed by none other than David Gordon Green, best known for pictures (George Washington; All the Real Girls; Undertow) occupying the sensitively poetic, atmospherically Terrence Malick-y end of the US indie spectrum. If Green - also responsible for 2006's little-seen Snow Angels - was seeking a change of pace to recharge his creative batteries (a wise move, if reports of his remaking Dario Argento's Suspiria are accurate), he's chosen well. Pineapple Express is a decidedly commercial project - only weeks after You Don't Mess With the Zohan, the latest in a rapidly-lengthening line of knockabout comedies from Hollywood's current golden-boy, Judd Apatow. Apatow co-wrote the story with his frequent collaborator Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (screenplay credited to Rogen and Goldberg only), Rogen starring as schlubby 25-year-old Dale, who spends most of his leisure-time smoking weed. That's when he isn't hanging out with his knockout high-schooler girlfriend Angie (Amber Heard) - or fretting about how, when she departs for college in the very near future, it's only a matter of time before she hooks up with a guy (or indeed a girl) of her own age. Dale's evident self-esteem issues partly explain why he's become so reliant on marijuana: as the opening-credits roll, he's loudly extolling its virtues to a radio phone-in programme - including its ability to "make shitty movies better." Ironically, it's his prodigious drug consumption which inadvertently propels Dale into the middle of a vicious gangland turf-war - ultimately revealing hitherto-untapped kick-ass capabilities beneath his unprepossessing exterior. Crucial to these daft, eighties-thrillerish shenanigans is the presence of Dale's principal supplier, the scruffily genial Saul (James Franco.) Pineapple Express - named after a particularly potent strain of weed - resolves itself into a pretty conventional buddy-picture, with Dale and Saul banding together and fleeing the bad-guys led by ruthless Ted (Gary Cole.) Having previously regarded Saul as only a nominal 'friend,' Dale is forced to re-examine his assumptions as the dealer proves much more resourceful, loyal and brave than his zonked-out demeanour would suggest. While never lacking in antic momentum, Green's script can't quite ascend to the next level of creating and developing its own little universe of freewheeling lunacy - in the manner of the best stoner comedies. At times the picture strains a little too hard for cultishness, and is quotably amusing ("Pandora doesn't go back in the box - she only comes out!") without threatening to split many sides. Crucially - considering they're on-screen near-continuously - Rogen and Franco make for engaging company over the course of a lengthy running-time (typical Apatow, that.) Their relationship's progress from a business footing to something much more emotionally solid is handled convincingly and unsentimentally, never getting in the way of the gags. As in the Rouault, "the two carelessly gestural central figures manage, for all their willed flatness, to communicate weight and substance" - emerging as they do from their marijuana-flavoured "haze of mystical indeterminacy." Or perhaps the painting's simply in there because the priest is "High"... Neil Young 12/13.Sep.08 -------------------------------------------------------------------- USA 111m (BBFC timing) director : David Gordon Green (Snow Angels, All the Real Girls, George Washington.) editor : Craig Alpert (Knocked Up, Borat.) seen 8.Sep.08 Newcastle (Empire cinema : press show) ... the inescapable questions which must be asked about any new stoner comedy. 1) Do you need to be on drugs to watch it? -- ... Um. What was the question again? Ah. Um. No, but it'd help. 2) Is it funny? -- yes. 3) Is it as funny as it thinks it is? -- no. 4) Is it ever hilarious? -- not really. 5) Do the stoner protagonists become unbearable company after a certain indefinable point? -- no. Seth Rogen (with his squirming, plasticized flesh and improbable bright-orange triangular nose) and James Franco are always bearable. 6) Are there numerous "quotable", vaguely non-sequitur lines? -- yes ("Pandora doesn't go back in the box! She only comes out!") 7) Does Edgar "Afroman" Foreman's dire drug-ditty 'Because I got high' feature anywhere on the soundtrack? -- mercifully and miraculously, no. 8) Is it as good as Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies? - or Dude Where's My Car? -- no and NO!  |
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