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Movie review: 'Pineapple Express' not just half-baked humor

Darren Michaels, Associated Press

In this photo provided by Columbia Pictures, James Franco, left, and Seth Rogen are shown in a scene from the action-comedy "Pineapple Express".

By Colin Covert, Star Tribune

Last update: August 7, 2008 - 5:03 PM

★★★ 1/2 out of four stars

Rating: R for language, drug use, sexual references, violence.

An improbable jumble of bumbling romance, frenetic bloodshed, giddy slapstick, cockeyed cannabis jokes and a pair of half-wasted stoners as crime-fighting heroes, this is the unlikeliest comedy of the summer. It's also going to be one of the best-loved.

Action comedies usually fly by at a manic pace, but this shaggy-dog story (by star Seth Rogen and his "Superbad" writing partner Evan Goldberg) ambles from one absurd turn of affairs to the next while paying plenty of attention to giggly character notes.

Rogen brings his teddy bear amiability to the role of Dale Denton, a Los Angeles legal-process server who ambles through his workday in a cumulus cloud of cannabis. "You're a servant?" marvels his dope dealer, Saul Silver (James Franco, blissfully zonked in every scene). "Like a chauffeur? A butler?"

Dale becomes a man on the run after he witnesses a mob murder, and the killer traces Dale's castoff joint back to Saul. This is one unapologetically violent movie -- the ridiculously cruel bloodshed becomes a running parody of sledgehammer crime thrillers -- but director David Gordon Green twists the tone expertly, so even the most bruising fight sequences feel like explosions of high spirits.

The bicker-and-bond allegiance that emerges between Rogen and Franco may be illogical, but it's a treat nevertheless. It's a rare thriller that suggests intimacy is life's greatest treasure, and it's likely to put a lump in your throat even as you chuckle.