i watched the pineapple express and all i got was this crappy contact high

actually, no. the movie was good. i got to hear seth rogen scream "jesus fuck!" which pretty much validates the last seven years of my life, since creating that phrase (at least within my own linguistic community) has probably been my most important and worked-at contribution.

i also got to watch james franco act like a dumbass, which is one of my favorite things to do.

the movie was good, and i honestly don't think you need to be a stoner (or to have been one at one point in your life) to like it. it was really cleverly paced (except for the last 20 minutes or so, which was a weird clusterfuck of deus ex machina rescues, revivals, and plot threads flopping around like the laces on the fresh prince's shoes circa 1991. one of the most glowing reviews i read of the film (read ten minutes before showtime at my apartment as i tried to convince myself i shouldn't just see "the dark knight" again) stated that it was an impressive film in the sense that it manages to be about four different types of film at once. it's a comedy, it's a little bit of a romance, it's a lot of the male-bonding-road-trip type film, it's an action movie and a crime film (sort of), and then it's also that weird sort of "superbad" type movie that abandons all those conceits occasionally to just be about life. okay, that's six types. whatever.

but it pulls off the chameleon act (mostly) well. there were a few moments, like the very first (and very gory) scene of violence in the film, where i was jerked around for a moment while thinking to myself "what the fuck?! that doesn't happen in a comedy!" until i realized that it wasn't so much that the movie was schizophrenic, it was just that it was politely refusing to pigeonhole itself even though i had expected it to. the fault was mine, largely. and since pigeonholing was the thing i was most afraid of from this movie, coming as it was from a large amount of the brainpower that generated the wave of "superbad"/"knocked up"-type seth rogen films over the last few years, it was a pleasant surprise to see something going in a bit of a new direction. also, i might have peed myself a little when seth rogen's character put that other dude's head through the wall and then followed it up with "uhh...was that too much?"