Pineapple Express

After inadvertently witnessing a murder, a man (Seth Rogen) and his burnout drug dealer (James Franco) find themselves on the run from the police and a drug cartel.

A unique mix of stoner comedy and brutal thriller, Pineapple Express may well have created a new genre, the stoner thriller. While the two genres may not blend seamlessly at first look, it will be interesting to see how the film holds up to repeat viewings.

Genre-mixing questions aside, the film is certainly a showcase for James Franco, whose Saul Silver is the highlight of the film. Borrowing from the likes of Sean Penn and Owen Wilson, Franco creates a fun, engaging character who steals the show despite a lack of catchphrases or mannerisms. Further, he and co-star Seth Rogen have good chemistry and make for a fun pair.

The film itself starts well, opening on a light tone, only to get progressively darker as the story unwinds, culminating in a rather violent finale. Now, the violence itself isn’t the problem, but rather the feeling behind it. Instead of the gleeful, cartoonish tone one might expect, director David Gordon Green takes a much more straightforward, almost mean stance, as if, on some level, he wants to punish the audience for thinking it was all fun and games.

But, and this is a big but, this approach may help the film on repeat viewings when, with the plot secondary, you can enjoy the finale as a well-crafted action sequence ala the Lethal Weapon series of films. Time will tell, but for now, Pineapple Express remains an ambitious, if flawed experiment in genre bending.