Summer Movie Reviews

I just saw "Pineapple Express", the latest by the new King of Comedy, Judd Atapow, and directed by David Gordon Green. (What were you thinking, David?) I am confused. The review in our local paper like others I have read, loved it. Laugh out loud funny is what everyone is saying and there are very few, if any, words written about the overwhelming senseless violence in this movie. First off, the leads in the movie, Seth Rogen and James Franco are stoned throughout, happily using drugs every minute and Rogen's character is dating a high school girl!!! WHAT?! Anyway, between using, buying and selling drugs these two useless men get caught up with gangs, turf warfare with the local chinese gang, and a corrupt cop committing murder. This is a mad-cap movie something like the old-time Laurel and Hardy romps but it takes the old "running into the wall" slapstick to a new more dangerous level using serious drugs, guns and killings. I was appalled.

Again, like my previous review of "Wanted", I saw this so you don't have to. It is stupid, senseless and delivers so many bad messages about drugs and violence and abuse of girls that I want to yell to everyone who had anything to do with this film, "Have you no shame?" "Was the money really worth it?" At the end of the local review, the writer says, "This one takes comedy to places--irresponsible, violent and funny--that it has never been before." As they say on SNL, REALLY!!! Can we have a reality check? "Irresponsible" and "violent" do not belong in the same sentence as funny! Is it really ok if the people who get killed are worse than the ones who survive?

The audience in the theater I was in were mostly young men and they were laughing a lot which made me sad and a little worried for the women in their lives. Again, the women depicted in the movie were loud, crass, fat, ugly and corrupt. On balance though, the men weren't much better and most of them were stoned. It was just plain ugly and a very bad sign for this kind of genre.