Pineapple Express: #1 comedy in America, or Just a Bad Case of the Munchies?

I was hoping to have a review of this film posted much earlier.  I had actually planed to screen a print of this the night before it came out, but somehow the midnight show sold out four screens.  Apparently everyone and their brother decided to get high as hell last tuesday night and come to the movies.  Nacho sales hit an all time high.  

Well, I finally got to see it the other night and I was pleasantly surprised.  I was expecting a lame, goofball stoner comedy; but what I got was an action-packed thrill ride and a halfway decent contact high.  Seth Rogen once again does an excellent job portraying the "Beta-Male" that America is coming to love and adore.  He has done God's work in making the medium-ly chubby stoned guy, well... sexy.

James Franco also had a wonderful performance as, for once, a character who isn't an asshole.  I'm glad he finally broke that type cast, because i actually really liked him as a redeeming character.  

I did get the feeling, however, that they sacrificed a bit of the plot for the over-the-top action sequences.  Now, don't get me wrong, this film had it's moments.  It has one of the best car chases I've ever seen on the big screen (#1 goes to "Blues Brothers"...with a bullet).  It just seemed like they got to about the second half of the second act and realized "oh shit, we need to put all that action into this action film."  There are some plot devices that they rely very heavily on in the first act that they just seem to forget about toward the end.  But I guess when your target audience has the attention span of a bag of Funions, you can afford to get away with that kind of thing.      

Overall I rather enjoyed this film.  It isn't the best writing that has ever come out of this crew ("Superbad" and "Knocked up" to name a few), but it's one of the best comedies I've seen all year.  If you're going to go, however, I recommend going high.  The humor will be greatly appreciated and you won't even notice the weird plot elements.  And if you're not into that sort of thing, then this film probably isn't for you.... go see "Mamma Mia."