Ethical Review: PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

Good weed and extreme violence! PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is a solid installment in the proud history of Stoner Cinema. Pound for pound, this has got to be the most irresponsible genre in all of film.

A Stoner Film begins with a group of two or more good friends, usually male. They are often on a journey of some kind, either in search of ganja or adventure or White Castle. They have trouble with their dealer, trouble with the law, and ultimately must commit an unbelievable act of bravery to escape, victorious, enjoying the spoils of their quest. They act out adolescent fantasies, no matter what age they are. They are often unlucky with women. They struggle to meet them and keep them. In truth, they would probably be better off without women altogether. The real love in these buddy-comedies is between the buddies themselves. This is usually the strength of these films, which would otherwise be nothing but cheap laughs. But at the center of the story in many Stoner films, an abstract moral code develops. Out of the haze, a certain ethical principle emerges. Loyalty and determination become important to our main characters, maybe for the first time in their lives.

Dale (Seth Rogen) and Saul (a wonderful and surprising James Franco) are irresponsible potheads on the run from their evil supplier Ted (Gary Cole). Ted has sent his henchmen after them, to kill them for witnessing his murder of a Japanese drug kingpin. After being double-crossed by their friend Red (Danny McBride) they embark on a quest to sell weed to minors and skip town. They wind up in the crossfire of a major drug war, culminating in a surprisingly violent shoot-out. This is the stuff of male fantasy, brought to you by writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad). The day-in-the-life timeline of the film, also common in many stoner films, shows our protagonists as they make one wrong choice after another.

But the hazy morality and high pressure of this world ultimately leads our heroes to make the right choice: each other. Within drug sub-culture, no one can be trusted. Friends come and go, and many of these friends are just drug buddies. Or worse, they are not your friends at all, just your drug connections. After an emotional break-up and a reality check, however, Dale and Saul come back together to rescue one another from certain doom.

Loyalty and personal responsibility are not values these people share. Dale has the only thing close to a responsible job out of anyone in the film, and even the job is a joke. He is a process server, serving subpoenas all over LA, in various disguises, and stoned out of his gourd. Saul dreams of becoming an engineer, and seems to possess the knowledge and skill necessary to succeed. However, these two grown men fall short. After momentarily blaming the weed for their overall lack of motivation, they fall back on old familiar ways. These friendships and the comfort of being stoned are the their greatest joys in life, and while this seems shallow, it resonates after the film is done. A good friend is hard to find. And though this seems to be the message of any number of other stoner films (Friday, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Dazed and Confused), it is nice to be reminded once in a while. These fellas have serious values, after it is all said and done.

The film embraces the homoeroticism of the genre, allowing our heroes to hug, as well as accidentally wind up in sexual positions. Seth Rogen often plays a good buddy who admits to his own homosexual tendencies (40 Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) and while his future projects may become more serious than this one, I hope to see him return in more films as a flawed everyman who struggles to fulfill his potential.

When searching for ethics in the Stoner genre, we get a bit lost amongst the chaos and wild turn of events. But at the core of films like this is a set of moral principles. The strength of this film is in the relationship between our protagonists. Their chemistry, their bond, their struggle, and their mutual decision to do the right thing, are all endearing and make the film a strange and satisfying experience.