Text size:

'Pineapple Express'

Rating:

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

August 6, 2008

Veering wildly between red-eyed stoner humor and blood-red violence, " Pineapple Express" is an uneven but entertaining action-comedy that answers a question you've probably never asked: What if someone gave Cheech and Chong a shot of testosterone and a couple of Uzis?

They might look something like Seth Rogen ("Knocked Up") and James Franco (" Spider-Man"), who make an unlikely but appealing comic team. Rogen stars as Dale Denton, a cuddly knucklehead who livens up his job as a process server by adopting various disguises. Franco, hiding his good looks under a Tiny Tim wig of long, scraggly hair, plays Dale's pot dealer, Saul Silver, an amiable wastrel with a sweet, almost beatific soul.

"Pineapple Express," named after one of Saul's more potent strains, initially features little more than slack-jawed dope jokes: One montage of Rogen sucking down smoke in different ways nearly provides a contact high. But just when your eyes start narrowing, "Pineapple Express" snaps awake. After witnessing a drug dealer (Gary Cole) and a corrupt cop ( Rosie Perez) execute a man, Dale hastily flees, leaving behind a smoldering roach that points straight to him and Saul.

Rogen and Franco sail through the improvised dude dialogue that's become the trademark of producer Judd Apatow, who also wrote the story with Evan Goldberg. But director David Gordon Green ("Snow Angels") and screenwriters Rogen and Goldberg juice up the laughs with fists, guns and cars. After the appearance of two hit men (one black, one white, both straight from "Pulp Fiction"), the bullets start flying and the body parts, too. Newcomer Danny McBride (" The Foot Fist Way") steals the movie as a much-abused rube who receives the business end of nearly every weapon at hand.

This may be the summer of the ultra-violent comedy: Next week comes " Tropic Thunder," the war-movie spoof with Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. It's not a new concept: Even Gene Wilder helped decapitate someone in 1976's "Silver Streak." But "Pineapple Express" scores novelty points for its blithe mix of gore and goofiness.

(R)

' PINEAPPLE EXPRESS’

PLOT A stoner who witnesses a murder goes on the lam and takes his pot dealer with him (of course).

CAST Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Rosie Perez.

LENGTH 1:52

PLAYING AT Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE Cheech and Chong meet Quentin Tarantino in this uneven but entertaining mix of stoner humor and brutal violence.