Weekly DVD Drop: Pineapple Express

By Chuck

Best of the Week: Pineapple Express
Have you ever watched a Cheech and Chong movie and secretly wished there was a bunch more car chases, gun fights and explosions? Apparently Seth Rogen has - and apparently he thought it was a really good idea, and so he decided to go ahead invent himself a little movie sub-sub-genre: the stoner action comedy. It just goes to show that not every idea you have while watching Cheech and Chong movies is a good one. Not to say that Pineapple Express is a horrible movie. It has its moments — mostly delivered by James Franco and Danny McBride — but those moments almost always occur during the ‘stoner’ half of the film. The other half just feels like a terribly miscast, completely unremarkable action movie, with a few random “I’m sooo baked” jokes thrown in for continuity’s sake. Worth seeing? Sure. Good idea to make more stoner action comedies? Nope!

Worst of the Week: Righteous Kill
Worst of the week? Try worst of the year. Pacino and De Niro need to stop acting. Immediately. They are sh*tting on their respective legacies so incredibly hard that it’s actually getting tough to remember they’re two of the best actors of all time. Really, they are. De Niro is probably the greatest actor alive right now! Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, Godfather II, Goodfellas… but for the past decade, aside from a semi-decent comedy here and there, he’s made nothing but garbage. The exact same thing goes for Pacino. Righteous Kill, however, easily takes the cake. It’s boring, stupid, forgettable, co-stars 50 Cent, and has one of the most predictable ‘twist’ endings ever conceived. Guys, please retire.

Leftovers:

Bangkok Dangerous
Nic Cage stars as a super stealth hit-man with a penchant for loneliness and a strict code of conduct. But then, oops, he breaks his code of conduct. He knew it was a bad idea, but he did it anyways, and now he’s left totally exposed in Bangkok but still has to complete on last high profile hit before he can retire for good! In short, best Steven Seagal movie of 2008.

The Wackness
If you’re feeling nostalgic for early ’90s New York youth culture, then watch Kids. If you feel like watching a movie about selling weed in New York, watch Half Baked. If, instead, you want to LOL really hard at a bunch of horribly delivered Notorious BIG inspired dialogue delivered by a few lame white kids and Ben Kingsley, you just hit the movie jackpot.

Disaster Movie
From the team that brought you all those other really inventively named spoof movies. Here’s something you may not know about that team: they aren’t actually retarded monkeys. Zing!