8/11/08

Alright QCI-ders… I told you we were branching out a bit. Since we talk a little everything here… how about movies. I have recruited a special movie critic… The Movie Mongol. When he’s not pillaging to countryside… he’s parked at the theatre... The movie review this week is on Pineapple Express.







If you are a college student or stoner – you will love this movie. Don't waste your time by reading any further. Go see it and enjoy yourself.

SPOILER ALERT: This is not to give away the ending; the true alert instead is that any thinking person will view this movie as a spoiler – not worth your time and money.


This movie gets TWO burning villages out of a possible FIVE.

Seth Rogan continues to prove that, while some certainly find him entertaining, he is a "niche" rather than a "talent."

The dialogue was brimming with stoner jokes, f-bombs and rather obvious observations on the mundane circumstances the characters found themselves in.

Then came the handguns. And the physical slapstick that included some grotesque violence that drew laughs and guffaws from the small audience in attendance. (The largest theater in the complex was showing the film, with the owners obviously expecting a Dark Knight crowd rather than the small but vocal lot that paid their hard-earned money to attend. Dark Knight still reigned supreme, clinching its fourth straight weekend atop the box office, becoming the third largest-grossing movie of all time.)

The rapport between the characters continued throughout the movie, with each and every sentence uttered with the beaming pride of a new father. If they were any more proud of themselves for the "wit" coming out of their mouths, the theater would need a larger screen on which to display their ever-growing heads.

Were there funny moments to make you laugh out loud? Most certainly – you can't help but find some honest humor in some of the antics and high jinks that the film puts on the screen before you. In fact, one can laugh out loud pretty hard in a couple of spots. However, it wasn't enough.

Seth Rogan carried the film to its pathetic end, no doubt about it. The film suffered an embarrassing plot that led it to its own suicide.

Rogan continues to wear his laced-up tennis shoes with a suit in this, his latest film – fitting of his personality in any number (if not all) of his films. But it's getting old.

Rogan blazes his pathway, and resembles that of a young Jim Carrey. That is to say, he is seemingly capable of displaying just one character per movie, similar to Carey being the over-the-top buffoon who made faces, eventually taking on serious roles but not before it was too late for his audience – and the world – to vanquish him to forever being the funny man. Never to be successful in his roles with any new audience; relegated to the Ace Ventura/Dumb and Dumber that Generation X idolized, he could never move on as the Generation itself moved on to explore deeper, timelier subjects in their cinematic experiences.

Rogan, a less successful Carey, risks falling into that trap, and had better find a more worthy role quickly, or risk finding his college-aged audience ascending to their mid-twenties and eventually thirties, viewing Rogan as a has-been pulling off the same tricks that just aren't that funny anymore.

"Pineapple Express" takes its name from a brand of marijuana featured in the movie.

I would instead pick a much different fruit for the film – a lemon.