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.
1 Comment
August 16, 2008 at 8:11 am
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!