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Pineapple Express
Columbia Pictures (Sony)


6.7

based on 37 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 126 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for pervasive language, drug use, sexual references and violence

Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez, Danny R. McBride, Amber Heard, and James Remar

Lazy stoner Dale Denton has only one reason to visit his equally lazy dealer Saul Silver: to purchase weed, specifically, a rare new strain called Pineapple Express. But when Dale becomes the only witness to a murder by a crooked cop and the city's most dangerous drug lord, he panics and dumps his roach of Pineapple Express at the scene. Dale now has another reason to visit Saul: to find out if the weed is so rare that it can be traced back to him. And it is. As Dale and Saul run for their lives, they quickly discover that they're not suffering from weed-fueled paranoia; incredibly, the bad guys really are hot on their trail and trying to figure out the fastest way to kill them both. All aboard the Pineapple Express. (Sony Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Crime \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Evan Goldberg (& story) Seth Rogen (& story) Judd Apatow (story)
DIRECTED BY:	David Gordon Green
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 6, 2009 Theatrical: August 6, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	107 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

As loose and playful as major studio movies get.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The laughs -- mostly crude, profane and drug-addled -- are almost non-stop.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's a quality movie even if the material is unworthy of the treatment. As a result, yes, it's a druggie comedy that made me laugh.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

You'll go limp from laughing.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

One of the most hilarious and engaging films from producer Judd Apatow's often inconsistent comedy factory, thanks to inspired dialogue, dynamite chemistry between Rogen and Franco and perfectly pitched stoner gags (undoubtedly the result of copious research).

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The movie is jampacked with jokes, sight gags and set pieces guaranteed to appeal to the audience's sense of the preposterous.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

A savvy nod to 1980s action comedies, down to the Huey Lewis original that plays over the end credits. But its greatest achievements lie in the tossed-off non sequiturs, the pop-culture (and Scott Baio) allusions, and the unexpected respites in the midst of all the bang-bang-boom.

Empire Damon Wise

Fans of David Gordon Green, you may well leave feeling confused. Fans of daft laughs and James Franco, you're in for one of the funniest comedies of the year.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

A film that is at once elegant and sublimely silly.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Frequently hilarious, occasionally sweet and often graphically violent, Pineapple Express may not be the greatest stoner movie ever made, but it will do perfectly well until we get another hit of Harold and Kumar.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Yes, Pineapple Express is exceedingly crude, but it's never mean or lewd, and for all the drugs and gore in it, the movie is also strangely, unrelentingly sweet, even when its characters are bleeding to death.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Like the film's giddily intoxicating cannabis hybrid, Rogen and Goldberg's script cross-pollinates Cheech-and-Chong style stoner comedy with Tarantino-esque ultra-violence.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The humor in this movie is smart enough that even a moderate level of intoxication or inebriation is not necessary to enjoy it.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

It's a funny, mostly harmless and entertaining film with a bad case of dry mouth.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It ends up subverting its own subversion, arriving at a place that can only be called conventional.

NPR Bob Mondello

Probably the most artful of the Apatow Factory comedies so far, but that's not to suggest it doesn't take being sweetly dumb just as seriously as the rest.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

So filled with verve and wit for much of its running time that it's depressing to watch it devolve into genuine foolishness and borderline incoherence in its final act.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

It's with that action aspect that Pineapple Express differs from Apatow's previous production output, and though, the words "taut" and "pulse-pounding" would never apply, the giddily over-the-top fight sequences, choreographed by veteran stunt coordinator Gary Hymes, handily compensate for the lag time.

Slate Dana Stevens

Laugh for laugh, Pineapple Express is way funnier than "Superbad." It may be the funniest mainstream comedy released so far this year (not that that means much when you've got "The Love Guru" pulling down your average).

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Perversely enough, the comedy is what keeps the picture rolling; it's the so-called action that persists in bringing the thing to a screeching halt.

Premiere Eric Kohn

Never achieves greatness, but it has the right people in place to suggest the greatness that might have been.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The movie's a crazy quilt of pot jokes, sarcastic put-downs and pop culture references both obvious and obscure.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Disappointingly, Pineapple Express is less than the sum of its ingredients, even if it's still a good stupid time at the movies.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Around the midpoint, Pineapple Express falls apart and keeps falling, and the comedy, spiced with considerable, unevenly effective violence in that first hour, goes out the window, and in comes all the gore and the bone-crunching.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The movie's too long - and the violence and mayhem are unexpectedly harsh and heavy - but Franco's inspired, looped performance is right up there in the annals of reefer filmdom with Jeff Bridges' the Dude in "The Big Lebowski."

Variety Justin Chang

This rambunctious paean to pot retains the trademark Apatow sweetness even as it careens from messy vulgarisms to even messier violence.

Los Angeles Times Jan Stuart

In the role of dramaturge, Rogen and his co-scripter Goldberg lack Apatow's discipline and deft hand for peripheral characters; the writing in Pineapple Express gets lazy whenever it strays too far from its central axis of players.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

It's an unshowy, generous performance [by Franco] and it greatly humanizes a movie that, as it shifts genre gears and cranks up the noise, becomes disappointingly sober and self-serious.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Let's be honest; a great deal of the sh-- you find funny when you're high really isn't (as anyone who's smoked a few bowls and laughed like a hyena to "Assy McGee" can attest). So hopefully nobody will be too disappointed when I tell them that "Express" is largely hit and miss.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

The problem, dare I say it, is that the movie just ... isn't ... that ... funny.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Goony, so-so comedy.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Watching this is like watching kids play with Hot Wheels--not a bad time at all, but I wouldn't pay ten bucks for it.

Time Richard Corliss

But it IS a movie about dopes: goofy guys, born without the ambition gene, and who would not survive a minute in the drug world, or the real one, without the guardian angel of a scriptwriter hovering to think them out of scrapes.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

As an action comedy, it's just a bad trip.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

When "Pineapple" goes from ganja to genre, it sours.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The picture is resolutely unhip and proud of it, which can be a good thing in the right hands or, in the wrong ones, just a gimmick. Nearly everything about Pineapple Express is a gimmick.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

It's empty and formulaic, with plotting that's lazy even by stoner-comedy standards. Without all the yuck-o sight gags, it would be a huge bummer.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.7 (out of 10) based on 126 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jason M. gave it a4:
Very mediocre. It seemed as if they had no real script and just "winged it" through this whole movie. There are many strange occurances that defy logic and the characters. The movies just comes off as "thrown together" and random, as if it was just crapped off the assembly line and into theaters. Could've been decent if they'd spend a few months on a real script.

Jane A. gave it an8:
For a young comedy I have to say it had me laughing. James Franco, I believe, surprised everyone in his newly comical role, and Seth Rogen appealed in his usual dopey yet hillarious role. All around a good laugh when most needed, and possibly only better with some mary jane.

J H gave it a1:
This is the worst movie I have seen in several years. The occasional laughs in this movie couldn't make up for the stereotypical, thinly-sketched characters, or the ludicrous plot. I know Seth Rogen has to be laughing all the way to the bank, because this movie was complete garbage. By the way, I'm a fan of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen.

ray s gave it a1:
Did not Hot Fuzz parody this type of bad buddy flick? Not funny or clever. Has a lot of physical comedy and lots of action. Two stoners bond after being chased by an incompetent bad guy. Movie sucks even if stoned.

Ryan T gave it a9:
One of the funniest films I've seen in years - I laughed so much at some sight gags and fight scenes I missed the next two minutes of dialogue

Rich R. gave it a1:
This isn't funny, it's just lame and dumb. The Harold and Kumar stuff is a hundred times better, a thousand times funnier. Kids who get a laugh out of this are way out of it, maybe too stoned to know the difference between true humor and pure bombast.

Todd S. gave it a5:
Over-rated. I expected this movie to be as hilarious as Old School or Superbad, and it was nowhere near as funny. The trailer is funnier than the movie. It almost seems like they didn't even use a script in making this film. Better luck next time, Aptow.

Pineapple Express Columbia Pictures (Sony)

Pineapple Express
Columbia Pictures (Sony)