Fruit Roll-up

The stoner-action picture – now there is a bumpspark. Take that oldest motion picture genre, the one that started with the very first director’s cry of “do something!” and combine it with one of our most modern forms, the pratfall on a buzz. The question that comes with any such hybrid is does it move? What are the miles per gallon? Unfortunately for the Seth Rogen-Judd Apatow team, their Pineapple Express is no Prius.

As a screenwriter, I’ve toyed with this idea before. I don’t think you can go through college without noticing the potential in the potential fireworks between dreamy potheads and their worldly dealers. Hell, Hanna-Barbara married hippies and adventure with a dog named Scooby-Doo over thirty years ago. So why doesn’t Pineapple Express work? Why isn’t it Superbad? Because screenwriter Seth Rogen can’t decide whether he’s making an action picture that’s funny or making fun of action pictures.

Rogen is funny here, of course. Like John Candy, his physicality, his mere presence, always brings a laugh. That James Franco steals the show with a career boosting performance is a bit of smoke however – Jeff Spicoli wasn’t much of a stretch when Sean Penn created him. Franco is a promising actor and the idea that this is showing his range is an insult to him.

I was afraid this film was going to rely on its audience already laughing when it walked up to the ticket counter. I can’t really accuse the filmmakers of that, of resting on their bongs; this is just a difficult balance to pull off. Whether Abbott and Costello were meeting Frankenstein, or C-3PO and R2-D2 were ducking blaster fire, the comic duo is always welcome in the middle of all that seriousness; their comedy compliments the danger. In Pineapple Express, the balance is off because the filmmakers are clearly outside their comfort level in the new genre. It is too bad that they fail, but why the fail says a lot about the genre where they excel.

The biggest, initial sign of a problem is that the bad guys are funny. Gary Cole and Rosie Perez as a drug dealer and a crooked cop are not threatening at all, when they should be. Their dialogue feels as improvised as the comedy scenes, which it should not. Thrillers, even funny thrillers, without a real threat, don’t thrill. The antagonists can be fools - there is no greater danger than fools - but they must be dangerous. Go all the way back to silent greats Buster Keaton, when that house came down around him, or Harold Lloyd, hanging from that tower clock. In those fundamental comic moments, the danger fuels, even heightens our laughter. We identify with the threat and it pulls us in. A one liner in a tight situation is there to let off steam. Unfortunately, Rogen never takes the action part of his screenplay seriously and the comedy he’s trying to create suffers.

Alfred Hitchcock called a MacGuffin the plot device that motivates the characters in an action movie that has little meaning for the audience. Here we clearly see that while the audience isn’t really concerned about the plot devices, they do want the characters in the film to be concerned with and motivated by them. Comedy ultimately relies on the suspension of disbelief, the ability to believe in the world of the creation, as much as fantasy does. Remember Harvey Korman, who died this year, who used to constantly lose his composure on The Carol Burnett Show? Admittedly, he was fun to watch. Jimmy Fallon, however, made cracking a smile into his whole shtick on SNL, which didn’t translate very well in his films. Korman was able to pull that stunt for as long as he did only because he was working with Tim Conway, one of the kings of all straight men, who always believed in his situation, who always had a straight face no matter how crazy the moment.

You cannot find the comedy in a situation while making fun of the situation as well. It is the difference between the Zucker brother’s original Airplane and Scary Movie XXIV.

The Seth Rogen-Judd Apatow team’s biggest successes are the films where they subtly unite the comedic situations of their characters with their emotions. The adventure that is adolescence is the balance for the comedy in Superbad. One of the biggest gross-out comedies of all time, the Farrelly’s brother’s There’s Something About Mary, transcended all their other work, again because the characters were sympathetic verses over-the-top. It was a perfect balance of touching and tickling and Superbad is a direct descendent.

In Pineapple Express, the action goes from lackluster to completely ridiculous. In the climax of the film, the action sequences switch from satire to sadism in the blink of an eye. You can almost feel Rogen becoming frustrated with his script and his new genre. When you think of action-comedies that were successful, 48 Hours, Ghostbusters... the threat and the larger world of the movie were as real as the heroes were hysterical.

I appreciate failed movies much more than just bad ones, not just because the filmmakers were honestly attempting something. They are also like cadavers you can dissect to see where they went wrong. Too me Pineapple Express is a failed movie, but a wonderful bumpspark, that shows us how comedy works and what comedy requires far better than any success.