sonoftrev

Well first things first. As this movie is marketed as a comedy I would like to point out all the biting and incisive wit within that us Brits are so famous for. Except I can't, because there isn't any! It shows the depths to which studios have plumbed that they actually thought this movie was a marketable commodity.

Mackenize Crook sleepwalks his way through a banal and frankly insulting script, as Paul Callow. A Dostoyevsky reading tube train driver, with aspirations to be a writer, who has killed 2 passengers in a matter of weeks and needs just one more to receive a pay off and early retirement. Oh the hilarity as he approaches an old man outside a retirement home and asks him to oblige. Our detestable and unsympathetic hero settles on Colm Meaney's Tommy Cassidy, a tramp with a terminal illness. I know my sides are splitting too! Frankly, that an actor as gifted as Meaney and the wonderful Imelda Staunton, who plays Meaney's wife, have to struggle with this rubbish is embarrassing.

It gets worse. Any director that imagines giving the awful fat gob on legs, Kerry Katona, a cameo in his film is going to lend some kind of populist gloss to his trite ideas really should throw himself under the next train to oblivion. Which is where first time director Johnathan Gershfield is surely heading after this abomination. Oh, and don't get me started on future Bond girl Gemma Arterton, she is so wooden she must vomit sawdust!

Weak script, weak acting, appalling direction and worst of all an incredibly patronising attempt to tack a pointless feel good moment of self discovery onto the loathsome main character at the end. He can write! He's cleaned his flat! I nearly puked! If you spend good money to watch this rubbish you probably will too. The most poignant moment of the whole film is when Mackenzie Crook looks out of the window of his flat, and on the sill is a copy of Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22. Now thats funny black comedy! This, excuse the pun, is a trainwreck of a movie. Avoid.

Do we really need another stoner comedy? With Dude Where's My Car? Harold and Kumar's various adventures, not to mention the Cheech and Chong movies already out there, surely Pineapple Express is a bong movie too far? Well fear not because this latest vehicle for the ubiquitous Seth Rogen is a likable and funny addition to the stoner buddy comedy canon.

Seth plays Dale Denton, a process server with a penchant for pot, who witnesses a murder. Unfortunately for Dale, in his panic to flee the scene he discards a joint made from Pineaple Express, a drug so pure and exclusive, only one dealer possesses it, the bad guys are soon after him and said dealer (James Franco). Franco is great as Saul Silver, laid back and poetic purveyor of illegal substances, his character is a million miles from the stuffy, stiff and wooden Harry Osborn he plays in the Spiderman movies.

The chemistry between Rogen's antsy chatter and Franco's addled musings is pitched just right, in a tight Rogen Goldberg script (Superbad) that throws in some sparkling dialogue for our heroes. Indeed, the script only really falters with the weak subplot involving an Asian gang muscling in on gangster boss Ted Jones'(Gary Cole) drug empire.

There are some great supporting characters, Danny R McBride's haplessly indestructible Red is a scream and has the best line in the film, "You just got killed by a Daewoo Lanos, motherf****r!" The bickering hit men Budlofsky and Matheson, played by Kevin Corrigan and an hilariously childish and camp Craig Robinson respectively, nag their way through the movie like an old demented married couple.

Throw in a hilarious car chase, which wonderfully subverts the machismo of more serious action movies, shoot outs, explosions, fist fights and not forgetting the greatest pot ever devised, Pineapple Express, that according to Saul is so good "it's like God's vagina!" And what you have are the ingredients for the world's first and best violent stoner action comedy.