Pineapple Express (2008)

"It makes everything better! It makes food taste better; it makes music better; it makes sex feel better, for god’s sakes! It makes shitty movies better!"
- Dale Denton (Seth Rogen)

Saul (John Franco): Just sit back and get ready to enjoy some of the rarest weed known to mankind.
[he lights a joint and inhales]
Dale Denton: It's really that rare?
Saul: [exhales] It's, like, the rarest.
[he examines the joint]
Saul: It's almost a shame to smoke it. It's like killing a unicorn... with, like, a bomb.

At a glance: Judd Apatow’s normally reliable comedy hand wavers with this occasionally funny but mostly loud, violent, and annoying story of two potheads on the run

Two potheads are plunged into peril when one of them witnesses a drug-related gang murder. It’s rare for me to find a comedy that I want to fast-forward through. Usually, I don’t mind if there are unfunny stretches, as long I get a few good laughs from time to time. Pineapple Express delivers zero big laughs, and lots of dead stretches, making it unbearable. Occasionally, it is mildly funny (especially early on, when it nails the drug dealer / drug buyer relationship perfectly), and in its rare quieter moments, I could appreciate the chemistry between Seth Rogen, John Franco, and Danny R. McBride. But often it is  excruciatingly loud, unfunny, annoying, and ultimately violent – with lots of scenes where Dale and Saul yell in yet another one of their hysterical paranoid weed-induced frenzies. I would have appreciated less mindless noise and dribble, and more Amber Heard. This is a baby that Judd Apatow should have sent back to be rewritten, re-shot, or just rolled and burned. Rating: 1 of 4

"The theoretically fail-safe team of the writer/actor Seth Rogen and co-writer/ producer Judd Apatow – the Knocked Up duo – deliver a funnybone- clobbering spree with more energy than wit."
- Nigel Andrews (Financial Times)

"The first half-hour floats by on a cloud of mildly funny lines ("couscous – the food so nice they named it twice"), but then slumps into a derivative action caper that's weirdly and unappealingly reminiscent of Eighties dross like Beverly Hills Cop."
- Anthony Quinn (Independent Reviewer)

"Though there are funny one-liners early on, the script becomes increasingly lazy, while the violence which takes over the second half feels as if it belongs to a different picture."
- Christopher Tookey (Daily Mail [UK])