Last looks

A good deal of what's wrong with Pineapple Express can be summed up by an examination of the movie's last scene. Dale (Seth Rogen), Saul (James Franco), and Red (Danny McBride, who needs to be sent back to AAA ball) sit around in a diner talking about how much they all love each other; they've just survived a massive gunfight involving Gary Cole's drug dealer, Rosie Perez's crooked cop (How great was it to see her again?), and some generic "Asians." The scene is completely unnecessary and the actors seem to realize it - I thought Rogen was going to wink at the camera. Critics love to go on about Judd Apatow-branded films "explore male friendship," so Seth and the boys are just giving the people what they want. If anything can be called "sweet" in a Judd Apatow movie, it has to be Franco's light-touch performance as the pot dealer. But all in all, Express was a disappoinment.

Consider the last scene of Superbad, which Seth Rogen also cowrote. Our two heroes (Michael Cera and Jonah Hill) run into their dream girls (Emma Stone and Martha MacIsaac) at the mall the morning after the chaotic Final High School Party. As they awkwardly pair off to shop for a comforter and some concealer, there's a sense of something slipping away but also the deeper and more fulfulling life yet to come underneath. This scene surprised me as much as anything in a movie last year and actually saved Superbad for me. (There's not much to say for The House Bunny, but Emma Stone holds her own with Anna Faris and is the real thing) I wish the filmmakers could have brought the same delicacy to The Pineapple Express, but the movie tries to be about too many things and ends up not quite being about any of them. It's the cyncial last scene that leaves a bad taste.