“American Idol”: Guy Next Door vs. Guyliner!

Adam Triumphant?

Was it just me, or was there a distinct going-through-the-motions feeling about the final performance night on this year’s www.americanidol.com

Yes, the usual elements were in place: screaming fans in the audience displaying signs for their faves; the presence of mystifying celebs in the crowd (Anthony Hopkins? Katie Holmes?); the two finalists, Adam Lambert and Kris “how did he get in here?” Allen singing three songs. One, chosen by them; another, chosen by unseen “Idol” creator Simon Fuller (what happened to Clive Davis? Did the “Idol” powers decide that his role as music-mogul imprimatur of talent was seeming too unhip, given Davis’ age?); and the third, the obligatory bombastic live-your-dreams ballad written for the winner. The awkwardness level threatened to sail off the charts, since this year’s pap spectacular was co-written by this season’s shoehorned-in fourth judge, Kara I’mnotgoingtoGooglehowshespellshername. When Simon Cowell made a passing swipe at the cliched nature of  the tune, Kara muttered something like, “I know.” Doesn’t anybody take this seriously anymore?

So Adam does his thing — he delivers all three songs with his signature mixture of show-tune-style selling it to the back row; hyper-dramatic, passing-for-rock ‘n’ roll screeching; and his ability to really feel the music and lyrics. He reprises his earlier season high point, “Mad World” (in a long trenchcoat, surrounded by more moody fog than a Hammer horror film version of London), “A Change is Gonna Come,” and the bombast-ballad, “No Boundaries.”

Kris Allen, cute and so generic he looks like the guy who joins a band after its charismatic frontman has gone on to a solo career, does a credible version of that old chestnut, “Ain’t No Sunshine.” The judges go gaga. But Kris then does the Fuller choice, the Marvin Gaye classic, “What’s Goin’ On,” with the same laid-back, white-guy soul he used on “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and the judges go less gaga. Though of course Paula — dressed in Lucky Charms leprechaun green tonight — is still proud, and announces Kris made Marvin Gaye proud. Quite a feat, since Marvin, as we know, has gone onto that great Motown medley in the sky.

Somehow, though, it lacked that old-time “Idol” combo of giddiness and cheese. It was good to hear Paula, so oddly coherent most of this season, revert to some vintage-style blurts. To Adam, after “A Change is Gonna Come,” she burbled, “I know with every fiber of my being you are gonna be iconic.” Welcome back, Paula!

So what can we expect tomorrow night? A two-hour padfest, leading up to the big reveal of this year’s winner. But maybe what has taken some of the wind out of the big finale this year is the fact that, as time has gone on, it seems a crapshoot whether the winner or runners-up will have the stronger careers. Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood won and have thrived. Ruben Studdard and Taylor Hicks, on the other hand…Meanwhile, also-ran Chris Daughtry has done just fine. So is it really such a big deal who wins? At this stage, isn’t it all about the exposure and who’s smart and/or talented enough to handle their careers to benefit from the “Idol” exposure without getting stuck in the “Idol” machinery?

To put it another way: I’m rooting for Adam. But I’m not at all sure that winning is the best thing for him. Or even that it matters very much. So I’ll tune in tomorrow, just to see if there’s any juicy craziness. But as to the supposed suspenseful outcome that we’ll endure all the puffery and padding to find out in the last few seconds of the show — it just doesn’t seem to matter as much anymore. Kind of like “American Idol.”

Depression Cinema: “Heroes for Sale” and “Fury”

"Heroes for Sale": Hard times have come again

When I was a movie-mad kid, I was fascinated by the Depression. I read about the history of the era, but, in all honesty, I was most intrigued by art and pop culture of the 1930s. The Multnomah County Library branch in downtown Portland was well-stocked for this kind of geekish info vacuum. There were John Gassner-edited anthologies of Depression-era plays (I may have been the only teen-ager to devour such antiques as “Waiting for Lefty,” “Awake and Sing!” and “Dead End”). And the movie section boasted volume upon volume of film histories, critical collections, studies of directors, and so on, many featuring discussions of Depression movies and filmmakers.

Now that we’re enduring a real-life, unasked-for revival of The Economic Misery Show, Depression-era nostalgia doesn’t seem so alluring. But thanks to Turner Classic Movies, movies made about and during the ’30s Depression keep showing up on TV, daring me to watch them with adult — all too adult, as my Coke bottle-grade eyewear prescription reminds me — eyes.

A few weeks ago, I caught “Heroes for Sale,” an intense 1933 drama starring Richard Barthelmess as a World War I vet who emerges from the trenches a hero who lets another take the glory, while he falls into drug addiction, as a result of his injuries. Pulling himself together, Barthelmess finds success at work, then gets caught up in workers vs. bosses labor strife.

A few weekends later, TCM got me again: there was “Fury,” the anti-lynching drama that was Fritz Lang’s first Hollywood film. I’d never seen it, but had read acres about it. Less a commentary on the Depression (it was released in 1936, which wasn’t the utter pit of despair that 1933 marked), than an indictment of mob mentality run amok, “Fury” might owe more to Lang’s own sentiments about the amorality or crowds, as he had not long before fled Nazi Germany for the U.S.

The setup: Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney — her moist, melancholy eyes are Depression-era cinema encapsulated, as far as I’m concerned — are a couple yearning to get married. But they must part, so Tracy can earn enough money for them to get married. Tracy writes Sidney about how things are going, and how his bank account is going up like a July thermometer.

As I watch this, I’m struck by the smooth surface that typified MGM movies of the era, a jarring element in a tale that seems more suited to Warner Brothers’ patented Depression grit. The plot kicks in: Tracy, driving to reunite with Sidney, is stopped by a cop who seems like a deranged hick. Tracy is hauled into the local police station and questioned. “What am I suspected of, anyway? I got a right to know.” He’s suspected in a kidnapping, because he matches the physical description. The incriminating evidence? Peanuts. Hmm. Peanuts? More circumstantial evidence mounts. Miranda rights are nowhere in evidence (hey, it’s 1936).

Customers in a barbershop debate the constitution and what right it allows — Sven, a guy with a Swedish accent, knows more than the townies because he had to read up to become a citizen. A townguy in the chair, getting shaved, grumps about elected officials and why they don’t do their jobs. Word spreads through a phone call, and then a network of gossiping women passing rumors — that get more exaggerated — about the arrest of Tracy and the kidnap case. Stereotype edit: we cut from yakking women to a cluster of hens.

Then we see the no-less hysterical male townsfolk — love the complete segregation of the sexes — at a bar, smoking, downing drinks, sharing their own cockeyed theories and certainties about the guilt of this untried schmo. Male townsfolk confront the sheriff, demanding info. The sheriff reminds them we don’t know if the guy is guilty or not. A townie stares down the sheriff, saying he demands to know what they’re going to do with this criminal, and he won’t stand for any political weaseling. The sheriff responds he won’t let justice be derailed by crazy rumors. The male townsfolk swap totally invented rumors about the crime and the suspect, condemning him of all manner of plots and deadly acts.

A self-described strikebreaker cuts in on the conversation, stirring up mob emotions, calling for action, since the sheriff is obviously a law-abiding pantywaist who needs to be taught a lesson by real men. Tracy, meanwhile, with no right to an attorney, is sweating in a jail cell.

The plot gets more heated and complex, with Tracy seeming to die in a lynching, though he actually survives. Transformed by the desire for revenge, Tracy declares that now that he’s legally dead, and they’re legally murderers, he’ll get retribution.

The ending goes soft, but what sticks in the mind is the frenzy of the supposedly good, upright townsfolk and how easily they slip into rage. It was a cry of protest then, and is no less timely — unfortunately — now.

Adventures in Netflixland: Natalie Wood

I just finished watching “Inside Daisy Clover,” the justly forgotten 1966 movie starring a whoppingly miscast Natalie Wood as a teenage musical movie star (think Judy Garland). And yikes, what a self-important, dated, out-of-time cringeworthy experience it is.

This is a weird relic of that horribly uncomfortable in-between era in moviemaking– 1966 was a year in which would-be serious directors (like Robert Mulligan, who directed “Daisy”) knew movies were changing. The late ’50s and early ’60s  had swept in the new European breed (Truffaut, Godard, Antonioni, Fellini, Bergman), but Hollywood hadn’t yet figured out there was money to be made by making movies like “Bonnie and Clyde” or “The Graduate.” So old-timey Hollywood production values were dangling uncomfortably over “adult” filmmakers’ impulse to show that they different from the old Hollywood ways of being.

Enter something like “Daisy Clover.” Adapted from a novel I haven’t read by Gavin Lambert (he did the adaptation himself, which, judging from the results, was probably an unwise idea), it’s clearly an attempt to be jaded and “La Dolce Vita”/”La Notte” sort of sophisticated. Yet this is an ill-fitting suit draped over an undercooked concept.

Lambert and Mulligan might have done better embracing the cheese of this behind-the-sordid-scenes of Hollywood than attempting to paint a coat of world-weary malaise over a cornball example of old-style Hollywood production (this is a period piece, isn’t it? But in Old Hollywood style, everybody is dressed in ’60s clothes and hair) and a festival of miscasting.

First and foremost: Natalie Wood, who is clearly a grown woman, trying mightily and mightily awkwardly, to pass as a what? Fifteen-year-old? And then a 16 year-old when her beach urchin-turned-America’s Valentine Daisy marries Robert Redford’s flawed romantic movie star character? And then there’s the fact that Wood, whose screen persona was most often that of a nervous, self-conscious introvert trying desperately to seem bigger, and at ease, is so utterly wrong as a natural musical talent.

Redford is actually interesting and at ease — though this was one of his early films — as the narcissistic star whose fuzzy sexuality appears to be a hybrid of again, “daring”  bisexuality and the Hollywood gossip legend of Jean Harlow’s tragic husband, Paul Bern, whose death shortly after their marriage was portrayed as suicide, caused by his impotence. In subsequent years, however, that story has been called into question (the current theory seems to be that Bern was murdered by his former common-law wife, and MGM brass covered it up — sheesh!).

So why did I watch this gloomy exercise in self-indulgent cynicism? I mean, as this movie has it, Hollywood stardom is equivalent to being imprisoned/tortured, surrounded not by adoring fans, but by practically nobody (it’s eerily underpopulated). But I was influenced by my browsing of Christopher Plummer’s colorful, entertaining memoir, “In Spite of Myself.” Plummer, who plays a studio head vampirical in his low-energy, simmering evil, writes with warmth about Wood, his crush on her and her flirtatious charm. Having seen “Daily Clover” a million years ago on TV, I was inspired to have another look. Let’s just say that Plummer’s sensibility and recollection of the experience as far more enjoyable and evocative than the movie itself.

“A Night at the Opera” – Stateroom Scene: Classic or Not?

 

According to movie comedy lore, the “Stateroom Scene” in the Marx Brothers’ comedy, “A Night at the Opera,”  carries a gold-encrusted reputation. It’s a comedy classic, source of years of hilarity, its origins lovingly chronicled in histories of the Marx Brothers’ film and vaudeville careers. Pauline Kael  casually described the sequence as “widely regarded as the funniest five minutes in screen history.”

Yet, here I sit, watching “A Night at the Opera” on Turner Classic Movies for the first time in years, and I’m reminded anew that the legendary scene is an example of that unfortunate cinematic malady — the overrated chestnut. The scene happens — a seemingly never-ending army of eclectic entities show up, asking for admission to the tiny room the brothers have commandeered on an ocean liner. The hordes crowd in, and director Sam Wood shoots it as if it was happening onstage, as we see more and more people crowding into the two-dimensional space. Finally, the peerlessly out-of-it Margaret Dumont knocks on the door, and as it opens, the mash-up inside tumbles out like a tidal wave.

Painful as it is to acknowledge yesterday’s classic may fall short in today’s context, it’s gratifying to revel in the timelessness of Groucho. In this, the brothers’ greatest hit, Groucho is still in  fine anarchic fettle, even as the brothers’ films were about to turn dreary, under the banner of MGM. The studio was soon to try  to mimic, with increasing feebleness, the successful formula of  ”A Night at the Opera.” As in, domesticate the chaotic, fourth-wall-smashing genius of the brothers’ earlier Paramount movies (”Duck Soup,” how I love ya), into a cluddish thunk of sappy love-singing-duo narrative (Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones, if you were still among us, you’d have a bit to answer for), thereby removing the danger of the brothers at their convention-busting best.

But in this shining 1935 moment, Groucho is still at his delirious best.  Sliding on the slippery floors for no good reason, other than the fact that it was the physical equivalent of his fast-moving verbal wit. Flirting with and insulting Dumont, with the combination of adolescent recklessness and boulevardier cheek that made her seem somehow in on the joke, despite plentiful evidence to the contrary.  Flicking off zingers like a verbal dart-thrower. Groucho is a vibrating wire, smarter, quicker and more timelessly modern than anybody else in sight.

The apparatus of MGM doesn’t weigh him down. Yet.

Awards Watch: SAG Hoopla

I’m watching the E! channel red-carpet coverage (here on the West Coast tape-delay feed — and no, I refuse to read the iGoogle stories about who the heck has already won, dammit!) of the Screen Actors’ Guild awards and admittedly, it’s early yet on the West Coast tape delay. But holy Mother of Maidenform, what has happened to Giuliana Rancic’s chest? I clearly haven’t been tuning in to the E! channel much lately, because the formerly rather streamlined host has ballooned into Busty McChesty dimensions, a development which her red-carpet dress — a stripey halter thing that looks a bit like a Miami Beach cabana cover — doesn’t just call attention to. It screeches: Look here! Down here! Check ‘em out! Hey, sailor! I don’t know whether she’s with child or with implants, but yowza.

Super Bowl Sounds: “It’s Boss Time!”

 

 

While I pride myself on my ability to plunge into pop culture phenoms, there’s one danger zone I’ve never been able to enter: watching the Super Bowl. The hype, the hulking football players, the overblown corporate machinery of it all, and the vast amount of money it represents (the commercials sell for millions! The cities that host make millions! Wanna get a ticket? Better have some spare millions!) are the opposite of the kinds of things that interest me.

But ever since the Nipple Seen ‘Round the World, I feel like I have to at least see the half-time show. So I tuned in this year for about the third time ever, to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. What a blast of give-the-people-what-they-want their mini-set was. Straightfowardly, Springsteen and the gang played crowd-pleasers that started out at high pitch with “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out” and whomped around the hits (”Born to Run,” “Glory Days”) with only a snippet of pump-the-new-release sweating. I had been sort of dreading Springsteen playing in this Mega Gianto Corporate context, but he and the band were a blast of energy. Plus, Bruce looked hot — let’s hear it for a Boomer rocker still working that tight black shirt and jeans look and making it work. Bruce, I’m on fire!

As to the game, I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is the soundtrack goes like this: Kurt Warner (John Madden insists on referring to him by his full name at all times, as if he was a holder of high office); Rothlisberger (sp?); blitzing the backers; Kurt Warner; excited raising of voice; field goal; first and ten; Kurt Warner; what about the wind?; some historic play blah blah blah; second down and six; unbelievable.

Oh, and don’t forget the horrific NBC promos. Not only does their announcer have the smarmiest voice in broadcasting history, but who thought it was a good idea to have the casts of “Chuck,” “Heroes” and “Medium” (is that still on?) lip-sync and cut up with cutesy choreography.

And, in conclusion, Kurt Warner. And defining moment. And smarmy announcer nasally pimping “ER.”

Oscar Nominations: “The Reader” Vanquishes Batman!

 

Kate Winslet, going for the frumpy/aged makeup/don't I deserve it?/Oscar gold

In  a rather snoozy year for Oscar nominees — seriously, with everything else going on in the world, doesn’t this ancient ritual seem more baroquely irrelevant than ever? —  the only surprise emanating from this go-round was the “how’d-that-get-in-here?” appearance of “The Reader” in categories punditty experts had thought might go to examples of mainstream Hollywood blockbuster might, i.e., “The Dark Knight” or “Wall-E.”

Apparently, Harvey Weinstein’s done it again! The mini-mogul and reported anger-management- problem sufferer is synonomous with grabbing Oscar noms for movies he produces, no matter how spectacularly undeserving (“Chocolat”? Really?) So, just to make Harvey feel like he’s getting his money’s worth, I dragged myself to “The Reader,” despite having read enough lukewarm reviews to have low expectations.

While it would be nice and all to report that “The Reader” was more than another Harvey Award Machine, the movie is even more anemic and muddled than I expected. I haven’t read the novel, and unlike the season’s other Kate Winslet Prestige Project, “Revolutionary Road,” this movie didn’t make me want to read the novel. The tone of respectful seriousity makes me think David Hare’s adaptation is plenty faithful. 

What a dreary dance around Major Issues this movie is. The Holocaust — most major of major issues — and German postwar guilt mix it up with forbidden sex (Winslet’s older woman and a teen-age boy), redemption, middle-aged malaise , and on and sleep-inducing on. I’m guessing director Stephen Daldry wants us to think he’s soberly grappling with the nuance and morality of it all, but I can’t help thinking the filmmaking team was more committed to making sure those sex scenes were just steamy and tasteful enough to give the box-office a boost.

I love Kate Winslet madly, but after her stilted, self-conscious performance in “Revolutionary Road” (which made me wonder  if she was off her game because of working with her husband, Sam Mendes) I regret to say her performance here isn’t her best, either. Winslet has said in interviews how difficult the role was, because she found it so hard to relate to this character. No wonder she found it hard to relate — the character is strangely dull. And while that may be the point — see: evil, the banality of — it makes the movie flat, and underscores that Winslet is miscast. Her  nervy, sexual presence is all wrong for this stolidly non-reflective symbol of the following-orders German who helped Nazism thrive.

Which makes it even more irritating that this may be the role that finally wins Winslet the Oscar she rather charmingly has made no secret of coveting.

Stuff I’ve Been Watching (with apologies to Nick Hornby)

 

Among the list of  dreary events dating back to September, ‘08 — the beginning of the economic free-fall, jobs disappearing faster than polar bear habitat, the persistence of a stubborn five pounds I can’t seem to lose — was the appearance of the last entry in Nick Hornby’s “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column in The Believer. Hornby is that rare bird — a writer who it has become fashionable to admire if one considers oneself in-the-know,  attuned to trendy taste, but not so trendy that one can resist referring to oneself as “one” — who also happens to be genuinely, timelessly, humanely talented.

His column was a delight not only for the insight it provided into the thoughts of a lively mind, but for the chance to think about books in a way removed from the context of the new-release book-review calendar march observed by most media.

While I can only dream about having insights a fraction as interesting as Hornby’s, I’m officially swiping his idea — I want to write about my own, admittedly obsessional, no doubt socially maladjusted habit of watching stuff: Movies, TV, assorted products of pop culture as they parade across screens of various kinds. Some stuff is of the moment, some is vintage, some is undistinguished junk that happens to catch my eye as I run across it on Turner Classic Movies.

Why do this? Well, aside from letting me revel in the sound of my own voice, I find that the incredible amount of stuff there is to watch — from decades past, forgotten creators, obscure gems, silly goofs — is so overwhelming it helps to try and make sense of it all, if only in the space of a few paragraphs here on a blog. And if this happens to find its way to other eyeballs, feel free to weigh in on your filter, the stuff you’ve been watching, and what you make of it.  One — and by that, of course, I mean me — needs all the help one can get.

“Mad Men”: Of Four-Martini Lunches and The Decemberists

Among the many fascinations of the AMC series “Mad Men” is its time-capsule quality: the early-’60s era it recreates with such fetishistic attention has both eerie parallels to contemporary times (a tension between the social pressure to conform to a mass-marketed idea of consumer conformity) and clanging contrasts (everyone smokes like creosote-lined chimneys! And drinks like unquenchably thirsty fish!)

I’m not surprised to find such parallels between then-and-now while watching “Mad Men,” but I was reminded of the era’s historic roots while reading “Positively 4th Street,” David Hajdu’s smart. concise exploration of the early ’60s folk boom, how it became the seedbed for Bob Dylan’s artistic rebellion/flowering; the fascinating coincidence of Dylan’s relationship with Joan Baez, in which he was boosted by her fame; and the marriage of Baez’ sister, Mima Farina, and jack-of-all-artistic-trades Richard Farina (a self-styled musician, he was also a songwriter and novelist, whose too-early death left a legacy of the book, “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me” and his friendship with the famously reclusive Thomas Pynchon, who cooperated with Hajdu’s biography by FAX).

So there I am, reading along, comfortably ensconced in the early-middish ’60s world of the Dylan/Baez/Farina nexxus, when I come across this line, in reference to a pre-publication work lunch between Farina, his agent, and his editor:  Richard Mills, Farina’s agent “Drank four martinis, his usual, and warned that any overt drug imagery on the cover could hurt the book’s sales.”

Four martinis?! His “usual?”! OK, clearly business protocol was different in those days. The detail is a passing example of Hajdu’s skill, the glancing reference underscoring the ridiculous hypocrisy of social norms objecting to “drug imagery” co-existing with tossing back four martinis mid-day while supposedly working in an assumed clear-headed fashion.

And speaking of passing references, how unexpected was it that Sunday night’s “Mad Men” episode began with a montage of women suiting up for battle — that is, their professional day ahead — with, in addition to them squirming into undergarments, the brassy musical accompaniment of Portland’s own The Decemberists, with Colin Meloy declaiming opening lines from “The Infanta,” from the group’s CD, “Picaresque”? The sounds of Portland are able, it seems, to penetrate the decades.

“Pineapple Express” and Why It’s No “Undeclared”

Boys and...boys together: Franco and Rogen in "Pineapple Express"

Judd Apatow is a talented guy. A funny guy. A loyal guy — witness his devotion to his rotating stock company of players and collaborators. But after seeing “Pineapple Express,” I can’t decide if the Apatow Factory — because at this stage, what else can you consider it? — is churning out proudly juvenile movies because of aesthetic choice, or as a reaction to Hollywood Demographics Holy Writ.

That writ is, as hardly requires repeating, that comedies must appeal to young males — assuming, of course, that all young males fall neatly into a one-genre-fits-all box. According to Hollywood theory, that young-male audience responds to the following: generally loutish but kinda smart, though they don’t show it, heroes; weird homoerotic overtones that often manifest as crass gay-anxiety jokes; guns blazing, with oomphy sound effects; people being shot as sheer video game-style entertainment; tiny doses of vacuous, pretty young women, as built-in rebuttal to any suggestion that the focus on male bonding might seem — well, you know.

As for young men who might find the above set of movie staples constricting,  let them take it up with their therapist in the future. The unrelenting guyish-ness of the Will Ferrell/Adam Sandler school of comedy leaves no room for the faint of heart. Which leads me to why I felt disappointed and depressed as the end credits ran on “Pineapple Express” — and it wasn’t just the resurrected-from-the-’80s Huey Lewis and the News performance of an ’80s-cheese-plate-style title song that sent me into the tank.

There are so many quirky, likable, box-busting moments in “Pineapple Express.”  Co-writer and star Seth Rogen’s ear for unexpectedly literate references and quirks of language, for one. The fact that Rogen plays, of all things, a process server, who is simultaneously proud of his process-serving prowess and utterly uncommitted to his crummy job. The teamwork between old “Freaks and Geeks” costars Rogen and James Franco, who — freed from the role of the tediously vengeance-wracked Harry Osborn in the “Spider-Man” movies — is a delightfully sweet, perpetually stoned, yet somehow innocent-seeming drug dealer.

As in “Superbad,” also co-written by Rogen, the male-bonding is handled knowingly, with goofy yet touching moments, and downright tender confessions of mutual regard. In “Superbad,” the adolescent heroes obsessively chased girls — but the movie was really about the threat to the boys’ friendship represented by college. In “Pineapple Express,” the arrested-adolescent men can’t even manage to pursue women their own age. Rogen’s character is dating — eww — a pretty, blonde 18-year-old high school senior. Who thinks he’s “funny” — OK, maybe — and “sexy.” Nope, still eww.

Franco’s character is, let’s face it, much handsomer than the portly Rogen. But he’s practically virginal where women are concerned. The only significant gal in his life is his “bubbe” — his grandmother, to whom he’s touchingly devoted.

Despite some time-wasting, squirm-inducing business with Rogen and his jailbait girlfriend, the movie’s emotional core focuses on Rogen realizing that his dope dealer, Franco, is really his best friend. Now, many a Hollywood action-buddy hunk of processed baloney has had the same subtext, though it’s more coy than overt. So credit is due to Rogen & Co. for just coming right out with it — “Pineapple Express,” despite the stoner-boys jokes, is at root a love story, and it tells the tale of Rogen and Franco’s characters realizing their affection for each other.

So far, so okay. If Rogen wants to make buddy love his theme, fine by me. But “Pineapple Express” swerves off the rails when it meekly goes just where every other action-buddy movie has gone before. We get lengthy car chases — where’s the suspense, by the way, in these ever-more-prolonged extravaganzas, when we know our movie’s leads aren’t going to expire in a fiery crash halfway through the story? We get cartoony violence. We get henchmen, and escape attempts, and shooting, lots of shooting, and then just to put the artificially-colored cherry on top, we get explosions.

By the time it’s over, “Pineapple Express” has become either the actors’ vanity project — hey, Ma, look at me, shooting and whupping bad guys! — or it has succumbed to StudioThink. As in, well, comedy’s fine, but let’s just juice up the action for those testosterone-addled young guys out there who might be tempted to stay home with “Grand Theft Auto” if we don’t deliver smashing cars and bloody bodies.

The collapse into mindless action junk is even more distressing when you think that these are some of the same people behind “Undeclared,” the short-lived sitcom as ratings-challenged as Apatow movie productions have been successful. Apatow had already shown his considerable talent as a producer on the Paul Feig-created “Freaks and Geeks,” an also short-lived, but memorably funny and smart look at circa-’80s high school students. Rogen was one of the cast, and he moved on as co-writer and co-star of “Undeclared” – Apatow’s baby — about college students. The show, like “Freaks and Geeks,” was an ensemble effort, with ample juvenile male taunting and pranks. But there was always a current of recognizable life running beneath the jokes — these were realistic people, who behaved in hilarious, but understandable ways, because of their insecurities, misunderstandings, misguided hopes and so on. Plus, it wasn’t exclusively a boys’ club — as in “Freaks and Geeks,” the female characters had their own stories, mixed-up emotions, and idiotic blunders.

Where has that kind of storytelling gone? In what is now the Apatow movie universe, the characters have been reduced to caricatures. In Apatow’s best film as a director, “The 40 Year-Old VIrgin,” the nutty high concept gives way to recognizable humanity, thanks to co-writer and star Steve Carell’s vulnerability and Catherine Keener’s honesty as the woman who finally helps erase Carell’s embarrassing condition. But since then, Apatow-produced movies have featured characters considerably smaller than the TV-sized crew on “Undeclared.” Is it the fault of the writers — Apatow, and Rogen, to name two? Or are they merely serving up what the Hollywood system insists on delivering, and doing their best to salt it for some added flavor? It’s not as though working for two TV networks (NBC and Fox) freed Apatow and his cohorts from would-be meddlesome hands and dunderheaded ideas about what they should do with their shows (i.e., incorporate cameos from the likes of Britney Spears). Why has working in movies brought out their less sophisticated side?

At this stage, it seems like Apatow could produce an all-singing, all-dancing version of “The Iceman Cometh” if he wanted to. Hitting that young-male box-office sweet spot will give you power in Hollywood. But as another young male could tell you, with great power comes great responsibility. I’m hoping Apatow and his loyal crew can find time to give us non-young-male moviegoers a comedy that has half the emotional empathy and observational acuity that any given half-hour of “Undeclared” managed to deliver.