Pineapple Express

PINEAPPLE Express is quite literally a HIGH-concept movie.

Cos it’s an action comedy in which the two leads are constantly bongoed off their chops on marijuana.

And I, for one, am disgusted about the misleading messages this film sends out in these times of societal breakdown to the troubled young men of Broken Britain.

So listen up, chaps. There is no way in HELL that you’ll get into the pants of a girl like Amber Heard if you’re a lazy drug user who looks like Seth Rogen . . .

Or if you aren’t earning at least £50k a year.

Dale Denton (Rogen) is a pot-smoking chump who serves legal documents for a living and is dating Angie Anderson (Heard)—a hottie from the local high school who’s presumably 18.

But his going-nowhere life gets shaken up when he accidentally sees a local drug lord (Gary Cole) and bent cop (Rosie Perez) execute a gangland rival.

Awkward

Dale escapes but the bad guys find the leftovers of his cannabis joint at the scene.

And they trace the rare strain of the drug —called Pineapple Express—to his loser dealer Saul Silver (James Franco). So Dale and Saul go on the run, enlisting Saul’s oily supplier Red (Danny R McBride) to stay one step ahead of the killers.

The bungling pair’s relationship changes from a grudging business one to a lasting friendship against a backdrop of gunfire, explosions and substance abuse.

In short, it’s an awkward mash-up of Die Hard and Cheech and Chong. And comedy producer Judd Apatow—this is his 17th film of the month—is at great pains to point out this combination has never been done before. And he’s right. It hasn’t. And guess why, sunshine? Because it doesn’t bloody work. Pineapple flits between big-budget violence and low-key buddy comedy but— surprise, surprise—they go as well together as chalk and Chewits.

A problem that is worsened by the fact it’s been put together by a man who has never directed either genre—US indie darling David Gordon Green. And he can’t shoot a big gunfight for toffee. But he does manage, in a midnight woodland chat between Rogen and Franco, to make a moonlit stream look all ghostly and pretty and that.

The result is a stumbling, dithering idiot of a film that’s pulling in at least three directions at any one time.

Example: Red and Dale are getting tooled up for the final showdown while practising their action hardman soundbites. It’s a scene which is, as you’ll know if you’ve seen the trailer, very funny. And rather than keep the lens trained on those two, Green constantly flicks between them and . . . a painstakingly arty shot of the twosome cruising down a neon-soaked highway in a Daewoo Lanos—completely wrecking the flow of the comedy.

I’m sticking the knife in a bit, so let’s be clear: Pineapple Express is not a bad film. But it IS an absolute stinker of an idea, which works against itself for a good part of the running time, and is only rescued by the Rogen-Franco dream team. And the fair-to-middling end product is probably about as good as it was ever going to be. Pineapple Express works when it’s most like Rogen’s earlier (and far superior) buddy comedy Superbad, telling the story of a “bromance” between two straight guys, involving affection, fall-outs, forgiveness and a fair amount of gay jokes.

Rogen does his usual curly-haired, amiable slacker who sounds like Rowlf from the Muppets act. Which is fine. But much more surprising is James Franco, who was underrated in the Spider-Man films as Harry Osborn. Here, he nearly steals the show and breathes warmth and good humour into a character who could have been, in other hands, a needy loser.

I really wanted to love this one. But despite some great moments and a reasonable gag hit-rate, Pineapple Express is too much of a shambles to convince.

I mean, come on, boys. Trying to mix arthouse camerawork, buddy movie banter and 80s action shootouts like that. What the hell have you been smoking? Oh, right.

OUT FRIDAY