8:00 PM, 1st November, 2008
No Guests
Shortly after buying a stash of the latest strain of weed from his dealer, the spaced-out Saul (Franco), Dale Denton (Rogen) heads to a dark alley to spark up. Unfortunately that dark alley is the prime location for Dale to see a crooked cop (Gary Cole) and a drug lord execute someone as he sparks up. Dropping his stash as he frantically tries to get away, Dale heads back to Saul's place to get a replacement only to find out that the strain of weed is so rare it can easily be traced back to its dealer. It all seems like weed weed-fuelled paranoia until the explosions start...
The Pineapple Express is another in the long line of comedies from producer Judd Apatow (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Written by the guys behind Superbad, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the laughs are guaranteed.
The 1980s was a goldmine for action-comedies, but the genre ran dry at turn of the 1990s. CGI seemed to swallow the budget for laughs as well as effects. The last few years haves seen a handful of decent action-comedies, but the lame have certainly outnumbered the great. The Pineapple Express is one hell of a ride and a step in the right direction towards a new golden age of explodey-laughy-goodness.
Adam Gould
10:02 PM, 1st November, 2008
We all know that movies are far from perfect. Even the classics have goofs, continuity errors and crew members accidentally falling into frame.
However, when a character claims to have always been good at Maths, just after quoting the volume of a sphere as "pi times r cubed", I'm sure you will be as riled up as I was.
For those of you who haven't ventured through high school yet, the correct formula for the volume of a sphere is four-thirds of pi times r cubed; I'm sure this straightforward fact is etched into the consciousness of any adult. Yet the film-makers were so lazy, they couldn't even scan the script for such glaringly obnoxious mistakes as this. What will this do to the thousands of young people who see this, and then proceed to make poor life choices based on their lack of common mathematical sense? It's horrendous to think about! Even The Wizard of Oz's Pythagoras gaffe was planned, to make a serious point about intelligence versus rote learning.
The rest of the movie is light-hearted fun, based around an exclusive English girls' school (only the worst are admitted). It's a re-imagining of an old British comedy, stars Rupert Everett in drag and has some bimbo from "The O.
C." in it for a nanosecond. But, of course, all that's irrelevant. Make sure you stand up in the cinema at the appropriate time and yell "I'm as MAD AS HELL, and I'm not going to take this (mathematical horsedung) anymore!"
Travis Cragg (a maths teacher)