Hacker Cinema
Pineapple Express
2008 · Film · 112 min
Directed by David Gordon Green
A stoner and his dealer are forced to go on the run from the police after the pothead witnesses a cop commit a murder.
1 positive1 mixed4 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
There are probably many/a combination of reasons. One thing I think that hasn't been brought up in this thread yet is a smaller amount of popular media portraying marijuana use in a tolerable light.
In terms of movies, how few and far between are big weed movies? Was the last one Pineapple Express, 15 years ago? Go back a few decades and there were a bunch of big movies, songs, etc. year after year about smoking weed.
>1. Pacing. It feels slow. This might blow your mind: The movie is only 2 hours. The sequel is about 45 minutes longer. I think this criticism is, frankly, invalid. Plenty of art/indie films get positive points for being contemplative, but this is a detractor from Blade Runner for some reason. Pineapple Express has the exact same run time, Sex and the City 2 is longer.
Pacing has nothing to do with movie runtime. A movie can be 3 hours with incredible pacing. Additionally a movie CAN be both contemplative and have great pacing. In the group of movies that have pretty bad pacing, Blade runner is one of the front runners.
That being said, many people have the ability to ignore pacing many people can't. Personally for me I can ignore pacing, but I very much notice it's absence and a movie is actually worse off without good pacing. Blade runner to me is therefore a good movie despite horrible pacing.
>2. Story and dialog. The movie is hard to understand the first time you watch it if you aren't hearing every word of dialog and processing it. I think this is the most valid criticism, but, again, it's supposed to be a good thing for a movie to challenge you to think, to take in context clues, rather than spoon-feeding you how you should feel like it's a summer blockbuster Marvel movie.
This is debatable. There's a sort of catharsis involved with solving a puzzle and deriving solutions from information not given explicitly. But if a movie delivers information too obscure not everyone can fully solve the puzzle and for those that don't the movie is raw shit. Seriously. If someone can't figure it out, then the movie is effectively horrible to THOSE people.
A movie is not suppose to be a puzzle. It's just suppose to feel like one. A movie should provide the right amount of foreshadowing, hints, expose, and explanation such that the audience FEELS like they are solving a puzzle. Movies that are actual puzzles are sort of snobbish as they are deliberately targeting puzzle solvers, not a general audience.
Blade runner to me is unintentionally a puzzle. It wasn't Ridley's scotts intention to make the thematic elements of the movie so hard to parse.
>3. The ending. It's not much of one, there isn't a big payoff anywhere. This type of ending is somehow totally fine for art/indie films but "not okay" here. Personally, I think we're supposed to feel like being a Blade Runner is a bit pointless. The ending is unsatisfying on purpose, just like the endings in Disco Elysium.
I thought disco elysium was more satisfying. It had better pacing which made the ending have a better payoff. Inception is also a movie with a ambiguose ending but PEOPLE loved it.
The problem with Blade runner is not really the ambiguous ending. It's because the pacing that built to the pay off was really bad and the thematic elements are hard for a general audience to parse so throwing an ending that's ambiguous on top of all of that just makes everything seem much worse.
On Hulu the tv shows “12 monkeys” and “Future Man” if you like time travel fantasies. Despite sharing a source with the movie 12 monkeys, the show has its own legs and is much more serious and enjoyable with a satisfying wrap up. Future Man is the exact opposite, a comedy from Seth Rogan. If you liked Pineapple Express you are likely going to love this, and if you didn’t you should skip it.
??? Are you for real? Just google "stoner movies".
Off top of my head: The Pineapple Express, This is the End, Harold and Kumar go to the White Castle, Jay and Silent Bob strike back.
But criminalization does work. Every time subject of criminalization comes up people cherry pick Portugal as some kind of miracle example completely ignoring Japan, Singapore, Georgia (country) Davao city, South Korea and countless others examples where strict laws (and their enforcement) almost completely eradicated drug abuse.
In the US you guys have incompetent people running the show and despite throwing enormous amounts of money you still get abysmal results. You can't be seriously talking that USA has honestly tried to deal with drugs when you have whole genre of stoner movies (Pineapple Express, etc) and when Snoop Dogg alone smokes weed like a chimney.
The incompetence in dealing with this is stunning. It's akin to homelessness problem in San Francisco. SF spends ~$30k per homeless per year and the problem only gets worse. Maybe, just maybe, those who are in charge are complete morons? At 30k per year you could rent everyone a room in a nice place. But currently it sure as hell doesn't look like homeless people have 30k worth of goods and services provided to them.
> I don't think its any coincidence that TV and movies show the murderous and thieving side of piracy as to condition us to be appalled by them, in general.
Is this really true? There's a long history of sympathetic portrayals of drug culture, from Trainspotting (novel and movie) to A Scanner Darkly (novel and movie) to Jesus' Son (novel and movie) to Pineapple Express (mainstream movie), and a whole lot more.
Exactly.
For example, the (also Seth Rogan / James Franco) film Pineapple Express: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pineapple_express/
58% rating from "Top Critics". 73% rating from audiences.