Pineapple Express

Seth Rogen had a good idea here, but the film itself doesn't deliver more than what the trailers show. It's a pot-filled adventure with all the trappings, which also ends up in the waters of action flicks that it dares to reference. On the one hand, it's great that the concept of total absurdity on a relatively real plot works, but on the other, it's a fact that a more significant intervention from the editor wouldn't have hurt. In particular, the morning breakfast at the end is really idiotic. Regardless, Rogen and Franco are the absolute top of the pot smoker genre. 3 ½. (10/28/2008)

An outstanding cast, a couple of side-splitting scenes, an excellent opening half hour and corners of the mouth lifting here and there for the rest of the movie. But what good is not taking itself seriously and spot on mockery of buddy action pictures when it backfires due to unnecessary length. Just a classic project from Apatow production studios. Cutting twenty minutes wouldn’t have done any good in the end. To make things better, it would need at least twice as much material on the cutting room floor. Including the action finale which is like out of a completely different movie. Which wouldn’t matter if it had been a good movie. But that wasn’t the case. Plus it’s d-r-a-w-n--o-u-t so much that it dethrones the Return of the King with its never-ending stream of endings. The Rogen, Franco and Robinson trio simply doesn’t have a chance to pull the Pineapple Express along, however hard they try. Clouds of marihuana smoke can’t hide everything. And not even smoking a “Christmas time" joint before switching on. (10/21/2008)

Ingenious, madcap hodgepodge. We’ve all seen stoned nut-jobs before, but they were never this nice or this funny. Rogen and Franco have no trouble entertaining us and the twists were obviously written by stoners. A myriad of unbelievable characters, an awesome chase with a foot in a window and a really bloody finale that looks like Vietnam with all that grass. Just more consistent dosage is lacking, otherwise great. (07/09/2013)

Entertaining, but often too over the top. Unlike many others, I don't think the are doing a good job when they mindlessly throw the main characters into a whirlwind of situations so exaggerated and implausible that their occurrence is explained at most by the proliferation of the titular addictive substances even among the actively thinking members of the crew. Not to mention the fact that half of these scenes are not half as funny as they deserve and we expect... But even so, I can imagine much, much worse shit ;) 60% (04/21/2012)

A few scenes are ridiculously funny (the apartment brawl, the car chase), and even the rest isn't bad. The film is nevertheless unnecessarily long and because of the action finale, eventually the whole sort of fades out into nothing. It’s too bad, but I actually still had a good time, plus I have to appreciate that it did without including most body fluids. (01/24/2021)