The Cinema of the Four

Pineapple Express

When considering the vices of my friend and self, Mr. Sherlock Holmes IV, I suppose one must look upon hereditary dispositions. There was great-grandfather’s flirtation with cocaine and morphine. There was grandfather’s enormous appetites for shad roe and beer. Father was a fancier of Native American hallucinogens in all their herbal varieties. And, I, alas, cannot seem to keep myself out of a movie theater, investigating the latest films.

In that, and no other reason, I recently found myself on common ground with the cannabis indulgent wastrels of “Pineapple Express.” We all have our little addictions, those things that hinder our productivity yet somehow give us a respite from our worries. Some of us can indulge publicly, others must flirt with the criminal element to satisfy their wants. And that, my friends, is where the story of this week’s film finds its root. It has its own hereditary dispositions, owing more to the current Apatow, Rogen lineage of comedies than its Cheech and Chongian predecessors. In their day, Cheech and Chong were the weird outsiders, the hippie and the Latino. Now Seth Rogen, with whoever he’s paired, is the insider, the dude representing his generation. After watching one of his films, an alien observer might conclude that cannabis is more commonly smoked than tobacco. And oddly, in modern movies, it almost is. (One has to wonder if the upcoming Sherlock Holmes comedy might feature something different in the classic pipe.)

What of the film’s entertainment value?

It’s an action movie full of unskilled action heroes. Unlikely fistfights like the one between James Franco, stoner, and Rosie Perez, cop, hold as much humor as any lines delivered in between the punches. The slapstick gets a bit bloody, especially when Danny McBride seems to be walking around with more bullet wounds than John Wayne in “Chisum,” but it all seems to work. Not a bad way to spend two hours.

What Great-Grandfather Sherlock might have said:
“Let us, then, form the provisional theory that every nine days the professor takes some strong drug . . . .”