Bill Hader

God’s Vajoojoo Tastes Like Semi-Glorious ‘Pineapple Express’ in Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen Stoner Film

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:01:00 -0700

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – If god had a vajoojoo, Judd Apatow and company think it’d taste something like smoking “Pineapple Express”. There’s no question “Pineapple Express” is ultimately a stoner film, but is it the ultimate stoner film of our decade?

Always the most difficult proposition in a comedy is maintaining its comedic pacing with consistency.

Dale Denton (Seth Rogen, standing) and Saul Silver (James Franco, being carried) are two lazy stoners running for their lives in “Pineapple Express”.
Photo credit: Dale Robinette

A comedy’s goal is to sidesplittingly laugh your socks off from start to finish (and even after the credits roll). So often, though, a semi-successful comedy will instead feel like a humorous rollercoaster replete with some ups and some downs due to the inability to maintain its “A”-game material in a consistent fashion.

“Pineapple Express” falls victim to the comedic consistency trap. While the story has its heart in the right place for a film that’s centered on reefer madness and the script successfully grows ever-more complex and ridiculous, the story needs to be sliced and diced.

For every two comedic lines that successfully land one falls short. While the film certainly has the beginnings of stoner-film greatness, it’s still sometimes stifled by lines that had the potential to be roundhouse knockouts and instead were crippled stumbles.

Saul Silver (James Franco, left), Red (Danny McBride, center) and Dale Denton (Seth Rogen, right) in “Pineapple Express”.
Photo credit: Dale Robinette

That said, everything successful about “Pineapple Express” comes in threes from its writing (Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) and its primary actors (Seth Rogen, James Franco and Danny McBride).

There’s a lot of talk about James Franco playing against type for this role. Based on his performance, though, this shouldn’t be viewed as Franco playing against type. This should be viewed as Franco having found his type. For Franco, all other roles pale in comparison.

Despite his excruciatingly untalented performances in box-office monoliths “Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man 2” and “Spider-Man 3,” Franco’s drug-dealing, always-high demeanor in “Pineapple Express” proves he indeed has acting chops that have been otherwise been hidden away. All he needed was a little Mary Jane to deliver him from acting evil.

Dale Denton (Seth Rogen, left) and Saul Silver (James Franco, right) are two lazy stoners in “Pineapple Express”.
Photo credit: Dale Robinette

Now a painfully atrocious “Pineapple Express” performance by Rosie Perez – who hasn’t delivered a noteworthy performance since 1992’s “White Men Can’t Jump” (or 2001’s “Riding in Cars with Boys,” but that’s really stretching things) – without a doubt is the trippy film’s biggest buzzkill.

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Gary Cole (her partner in crime) delivers an equally frightful performance. Amber Heard – a name you’ve likely never heard of before – continues trying to make her way in Hollywood after being bolstered by various “hot” ratings from magazines including Jane and Maxim.

Heard plays Rogen’s much younger high school girlfriend who fits with him just as much as a Mormon fits married to a Jew. Though this film is marketed with the burgeoning star power of James Franco and Seth Rogen behind the powerful comedic name of writer and producer Judd Apatow, we are not to forget Danny McBride.

Whether you loved McBride or hated him in “The Foot Fist Way” (or have never even heard of that film), “Pineapple Express” isn’t just the duo its advertising may have made you believe. McBride is the necessary tripod of this trio. Rogen co-wrote the story along with Apatow and Evan Goldberg (who also wrote “Superbad” along with Rogen).

“Pineapple Express,” which is directed by David Gordon Green and is written by Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow and Evan Goldberg, stars Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Rosie Perez, Amber Heard, Gary Cole and Kevin Corrigan. The film opened everywhere on Aug. 6, 2008.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com

Judd Apatow Again Fashions Gimmick Into Gold in Uproarious ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 09:00:37 -0700

CHICAGO – After being blitzed by an onslaught of attention-demanding advertising that begged the question “who is Sarah Marshall?” even before you realized it’s a film, anticipation was ravenous.

Kristen Bell as Sarah Marshall in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”.
Photo credit: IMDb

It became nothing short of voracious upon learning it’s backed by producer Judd Apatow of “Superbad,” “Knocked Up,” “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” fame (also with high hopes for his “Pineapple Express,” which opens on Aug. 8, 2008).

Through his Apatow Productions company, Apatow has made beaucoup bucks and a mountainous name by banding together the same stooges time and time again.

In “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” we’re treated to the return of Bill Hader and Jonah Hill (both in Apatow’s “Superbad” and “Knocked Up” together).

While it’s still early in the year and few films have stood out to date, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” indeed delivers on its hype as the funniest comedy so far in 2008.

RELATED IMAGE GALLERY
View our huge “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” image gallery

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More film reviews from critic Adam Fendelman

Apatow has once again fashioned what could have been cheesy gimmick into delicious gold. In a telltale sign of its riotous good time, Chicago critics have even been promising to return on opening weekend for a second paid viewing with friends.

While first-time filmmaking talent is often a precarious, hit-or-miss gamble, it pays off in spades this time.

The film is written by first-time writer Jason Segel (who features himself in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” as main-character Peter Bretter – and often buck naked, too) and directed by first-time director Nicholas Stoller (who wrote 2005’s “Fun With Dick and Jane”).

While Segel’s writing valiantly laughs you out of your chair all throughout the film, his starring role within his own words takes some time to earn your trust. Up until about halfway through, I kept questioning whether he was tragically miscast for the lead.

His big, teddy-bear demeanor and charming naïveté, though, wins you over by the climax. Here’s a small taste of some of his written nuggets of gold, too:

Matthew (played by Jonah Hill): “I have a question for you real quick. What did you think of my demo? Did you get it?”

Aldous Snow (played by Russell Brand): “I was gonna listen to that, but then – um – I just carried on living my life.”

Jason Segel (left) and Kristen Bell in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”.
Photo credit: IMDb

Just as much as Segel stars in the film as Peter, Kristen Bell equally co-stars in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” as the siren everyone has been talking about before even arriving to the theaters in droves: Sarah Marshall.

Bell (who played Veronica Mars in “Veronica Mars”) burns up the screen every second she’s on it and is cast in the comedy with perfection.

The Ukrainian Mila Kunis – who you’d know as Jackie Burkhart in “That ‘70s Show” – is a wholesome addition who’s part saint and part sinner. Bill Hader as Peter’s brother, Brian Bretter, again rocks the casbah in his portrayal of the advice-spewing, Webcam-coaching sibling.

Paul Rudd (also in “Knocked Up”) as Chuck the surf-lesson guy is wonderfully way, way out there.

Russell Brand in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”.
Photo credit: IMDb

Jonah Hill is hysterically written in as a waiter named Matthew who not-so-subtly has a professional man crush on the unanticipated diamond in the film’s rough: Russell Brand.

Brand completely oozes himself into the eccentrically carefree, libidinous rock star named Aldous Snow who scoops up Sarah Marshall after she bulldozes Peter Bretter’s heart.

As Peter mourns the loss of his girlfriend and sees his confidence swell, he falls into the lap of Mila Kunis while she’s working at a Hawaiian resort.

Though from the text typed in this review it’d sound catastrophically lame, Peter even woos you with the distinctly unusual and decidedly novel concept of a Dracula rock-band puppet show.

While “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in tagged with lots of puff and catchphrasing – including “a comedy about getting dumped and taking it like a man” and “the ultimate romantic disaster movie” – the film’s ultimately and indisputably one of the most entertaining ways you could spend 112 minutes.

“Forgetting Sarah Marshall” opened on April 18, 2008.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com