Pineapple Express
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: August 6, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
12
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
As loose and playful as major studio movies get. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The laughs -- mostly crude, profane and drug-addled -- are almost non-stop. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
It's a quality movie even if the material is unworthy of the treatment. As a result, yes, it's a druggie comedy that made me laugh. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
You'll go limp from laughing. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
One of the most hilarious and engaging films from producer Judd Apatow's often inconsistent comedy factory, thanks to inspired dialogue, dynamite chemistry between Rogen and Franco and perfectly pitched stoner gags (undoubtedly the result of copious research). Read full review
80
Village VoiceRobert Wilonsky
A savvy nod to 1980s action comedies, down to the Huey Lewis original that plays over the end credits. But its greatest achievements lie in the tossed-off non sequiturs, the pop-culture (and Scott Baio) allusions, and the unexpected respites in the midst of all the bang-bang-boom. Read full review
80
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
The movie is jampacked with jokes, sight gags and set pieces guaranteed to appeal to the audience's sense of the preposterous. Read full review
80
EmpireDamon Wise
Fans of David Gordon Green, you may well leave feeling confused. Fans of daft laughs and James Franco, you're in for one of the funniest comedies of the year. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
A film that is at once elegant and sublimely silly. Read full review
75
NPRBob Mondello
Probably the most artful of the Apatow Factory comedies so far, but that's not to suggest it doesn't take being sweetly dumb just as seriously as the rest. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The humor in this movie is smart enough that even a moderate level of intoxication or inebriation is not necessary to enjoy it. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
It ends up subverting its own subversion, arriving at a place that can only be called conventional. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChroniclePeter Hartlaub
It's a funny, mostly harmless and entertaining film with a bad case of dry mouth. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
Like the film's giddily intoxicating cannabis hybrid, Rogen and Goldberg's script cross-pollinates Cheech-and-Chong style stoner comedy with Tarantino-esque ultra-violence. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Yes, Pineapple Express is exceedingly crude, but it's never mean or lewd, and for all the drugs and gore in it, the movie is also strangely, unrelentingly sweet, even when its characters are bleeding to death. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Frequently hilarious, occasionally sweet and often graphically violent, Pineapple Express may not be the greatest stoner movie ever made, but it will do perfectly well until we get another hit of Harold and Kumar. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
So filled with verve and wit for much of its running time that it's depressing to watch it devolve into genuine foolishness and borderline incoherence in its final act. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
It's with that action aspect that Pineapple Express differs from Apatow's previous production output, and though, the words "taut" and "pulse-pounding" would never apply, the giddily over-the-top fight sequences, choreographed by veteran stunt coordinator Gary Hymes, handily compensate for the lag time. Read full review
70
SlateDana Stevens
Laugh for laugh, Pineapple Express is way funnier than "Superbad." It may be the funniest mainstream comedy released so far this year (not that that means much when you've got "The Love Guru" pulling down your average). Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Around the midpoint, Pineapple Express falls apart and keeps falling, and the comedy, spiced with considerable, unevenly effective violence in that first hour, goes out the window, and in comes all the gore and the bone-crunching. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
The movie's too long - and the violence and mayhem are unexpectedly harsh and heavy - but Franco's inspired, looped performance is right up there in the annals of reefer filmdom with Jeff Bridges' the Dude in "The Big Lebowski." Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
The movie's a crazy quilt of pot jokes, sarcastic put-downs and pop culture references both obvious and obscure. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Disappointingly, Pineapple Express is less than the sum of its ingredients, even if it's still a good stupid time at the movies. Read full review
63
PremiereEric Kohn
Never achieves greatness, but it has the right people in place to suggest the greatness that might have been. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Perversely enough, the comedy is what keeps the picture rolling; it's the so-called action that persists in bringing the thing to a screeching halt. Read full review
60
VarietyJustin Chang
This rambunctious paean to pot retains the trademark Apatow sweetness even as it careens from messy vulgarisms to even messier violence. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
It's an unshowy, generous performance [by Franco] and it greatly humanizes a movie that, as it shifts genre gears and cranks up the noise, becomes disappointingly sober and self-serious. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJan Stuart
In the role of dramaturge, Rogen and his co-scripter Goldberg lack Apatow's discipline and deft hand for peripheral characters; the writing in Pineapple Express gets lazy whenever it strays too far from its central axis of players. Read full review
60
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Let's be honest; a great deal of the sh-- you find funny when you're high really isn't (as anyone who's smoked a few bowls and laughed like a hyena to "Assy McGee" can attest). So hopefully nobody will be too disappointed when I tell them that "Express" is largely hit and miss. Read full review
60
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
The problem, dare I say it, is that the movie just ... isn't ... that ... funny. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Watching this is like watching kids play with Hot Wheels--not a bad time at all, but I wouldn't pay ten bucks for it. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Goony, so-so comedy. Read full review
50
TimeRichard Corliss
But it IS a movie about dopes: goofy guys, born without the ambition gene, and who would not survive a minute in the drug world, or the real one, without the guardian angel of a scriptwriter hovering to think them out of scrapes. Read full review
42
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
As an action comedy, it's just a bad trip. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
It's empty and formulaic, with plotting that's lazy even by stoner-comedy standards. Without all the yuck-o sight gags, it would be a huge bummer. Read full review
40
SalonStephanie Zacharek
The picture is resolutely unhip and proud of it, which can be a good thing in the right hands or, in the wrong ones, just a gimmick. Nearly everything about Pineapple Express is a gimmick. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
When "Pineapple" goes from ganja to genre, it sours. Read full review
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