Pineapple Express Review

David Gordon Green comes from independent drama and brings his cinematographer with him, so the film has a warmth and depth in the frame that this genre almost never gets. Critics note it first and it holds up. The second thing they note is James Franco, whose Saul Silver is played with a dopey sweetness that turns a stock dealer into the emotional center of the picture, and the friendship between him and Rogen's Dale is written with real tenderness under the panic. What divides people is the escalation.

The film starts as a hangout comedy about two men who like each other and ends in a warehouse shootout with a body count, and the switch arrives without the setup to earn it. Several reviewers argue the violence curdles the comedy rather than sharpening it, and the last half hour is noticeably less funny than the first stretch. The plotting around the drug war is perfunctory, a machine for moving the two of them from room to room, and the villains barely register. As a chase movie it is thin. As a portrait of a friendship built entirely on being high together, it is unusually generous.