DVD Review: Flower (2017)

Now Available

Centering your film on a whip smart seventeen-year-old girl with a gift for rapid fire one-liners who uses her Deep Throatish oral fixation to blackmail the men in her town is a daring proposition indeed… and doubly so when it’s written and directed solely by men.

Of course, gender alone shouldn't automatically preclude men from telling the stories of young women as some of cinema’s best female monologues and roles have been penned by men.

Still, having your underage lead obsessively draw phalluses and proposition her troubled future stepbrother within an hour of meeting him while comparing her oral sex skills to that of The Horse Whisperer isn't exactly the stuff of John Hughes, even if it does fit in with the confrontational comedic brand of executive producers Jody Hill and Danny McBride, whose work is filled with problematic female characters.

And while all of this might've been okay had we even begun to scratch the surface of the character, aside from obvious daddy issues (including a scene where she tries to seduce and entrap a potential pedophile she'd dubbed a “hot old guy” while wearing a shirt emblazoned with the word “Daddy”) and a few throwaway lines referencing a past shrink, we’re mostly left scratching our heads.

Needless to say, on paper, everything about Flower shouldn't work and onscreen, it nearly doesn't, save for the megawatt performance by Zoey Deutch as the wildly uninhibited Erica. A star on the rise who's been the best thing in a number of projects including this year's Netflix uneven original movie Set It Up, in Flower, Deutch fills the screen with so much luminous energy that she probably saved the half million dollar indie a fortune in lighting costs.

Originally penned by young adult novelist Alex McAulay, Flower was named one on the Black List's best unproduced screenplays back in 2012. Reconfigured over time and co-written by its director Max Winkler as well as Ingrid Goes West co-writer/director Matt Spicer, while undeniably creative, this incarnation of Flower feels like what happens when three different puzzles wind up in the same box.

Despite some bright spots in the performances of not only Deutch but the film's entire supporting cast including Step Brothers costars Kathryn Hahn and Adam Scott (who don't share a single scene here), the pieces just don't fit.

Trading in her after school hobby of sexual blackmail to instead go after a potential predator at night, the film, much like Erica's noble yet misguided quest changes mightily from one scene to the next. Never sure of its approach, Flower has trouble adjusting to its pendulum swings in logic and tone.

While it's an unconventional choice to say the least, the decision to mix Erica's sexual coming-of-age (complete with a wide range of legally and socially unacceptable partners) with busting a sex offender offered Flower's writers ample opportunity to explore Erica's issues in a very real way... at least for a scene or two.

Regrettably more interested in fantasy than reality, as the film continues, Winkler and company attempt a shortcut and drop the ball. Muddying things up during a key sequence where both issues overlap, Flower takes on a sleazily voyeuristic vibe – temporarily turning Erica into an object instead of a three dimensional person. Though this is short-lived, the implausible wish fulfillment of Flower's third act misses the opportunity to set things right.

Bursting with ideas, at ninety minutes, Flower is chaotic and overstuffed. Less hit than miss, just like most flowers need only sunlight and water to thrive, Flower is proof that when you're dealing with serious issues and someone as talented as Deutch, Winkler should've taken a cue from nature, cut out all the excess and used less in order to say so much more.

Of course, a woman's point-of-view couldn't hurt.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

DVD Review: Tropic Thunder-- 2 Disc Director's Cut

Hitting DVD & Blu-Ray on November 18

Order It Today

Read the Original Soundtrack Review

Read the Original Theatrical Review

In honor of November 18th's DVD & Blu-ray release of the Ben Stiller's summer comedy Tropic Thunder, I'm offering you an insider's view of the DVD that DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment were kind enough to send my way. However, before I go into the DVD features, first I'll serve up the first four paragraphs of my original theatrical review of Tropic Thunder, originally published on August 13, 2008.

Tropic Thunder



Director:
Ben Stiller

Former highbrow theatrical director turned filmmaker Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) is in trouble. When the explosives expert (Pineapple Express scene stealer Danny McBride) working on his big budget Vietnam epic film debut misinterprets Cockburn’s temper tantrum for a cue, four million dollars in explosives are wasted, everything is blown to smithereens, and the worst thing is that the camera wasn’t even rolling. Unable to control the actors on his set and already one month behind schedule after just five days of shooting, the British thespian is soon punched in the face very hard by a grip, upon orders shouted via webcam by sleazy studio boss Les Grossman (a hilarious and nearly unrecognizable Tom Cruise).

Out of desperation, he turns to Nick Nolte’s Four Leaf Tayback, the former Vietnam soldier who wrote the book they are adapting — not to mention the type soldier who may not have gotten the memo that the war is over. Visibly relishing his role, Nolte’s Tayback is often framed in a corner spouting off sentence fragments and irrational, obscenity-laced anecdotes that frighten and amuse all at the same time. Advising the mild-mannered Brit to get the actors “off the f***in’ grid” and into “the s***,” Cockburn heeds Tayback’s advice. With the hope that improvisational filmmaking will get the movie back on track, he sets up his “own little personal slice of ‘Nam.”

However, shortly after depositing his cast of five diverse leads deep into the heart of the jungle in order to show his pampered actors he’s really running the show, things go terribly, shockingly wrong. And soon enough the cast find themselves in a real life mini-war of their own when instead of guerilla filmmaking, the men become the target of heroin-trafficking guerillas who’ve mistaken them for DEA soldiers (yeah, I didn’t get that either). Obviously, this proves to be much more than the actors can handle, as they’d signed on with their contractual clauses for perks like gift baskets, TiVo, and luxury items, only to find themselves dodging bullets instead.

Heading up the group is Tropic Thunder’s director and co-writer Ben Stiller as Tugg Speedman, a has-been, Rambo-styled action star whose most recent film wherein he played a mentally challenged character — Simple Jack — not only ruined his career but was also named one of the worst films of all time. With his barefooted agent (Matthew McConaughey) behind him, Speedman tries to get back into Hollywood’s spotlight but is worried he’ll be upstaged by his costar, the five time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr. channeling Russell Crowe), an Australian method actor so committed to his craft that he underwent skin pigmentation surgery in order to play an African-American for Cockburn’s film..."

Click Here to Read the Entire Review


The 2-Disc Director's Cut DVD

Although it's dubbed the "director's cut," I couldn't honestly tell a distinct difference between the theatrical version of Tropic Thunder with the feature film presented on the first disc of this set. Yet, for true fans of the movie and those interested in filmmaking in general, the 2-Disc set is ideal with Stiller providing enough added hilarity and down and dirty, gritty behind-the-scenes movie-making 101 examples to make it a terrific investment.

Offering audiences the chance to watch the film with two different commentary tracks including one consisting of the more creative and technical side from the filmmakers of Thunder-- the second track is the more free-wheeling DVD commentary offered up by the cast, including Downey who joked in the film that he doesn't break character until he's recorded the DVD commentary.

Also, perhaps to answer the bad press the movie received shortly before its premiere regarding the "Simple Jack" controversy as Stiller's action movie character Tugg Speedman had recently played a mentally challenged man resulting in a few instances in the film where the word "retarded" is bantered about (more to poke fun at Hollywood ego and industry exploitation than anything else)), there is a quality Public Service Announcement added onto Disc 1 wherein the tagline promises that the only "R" word those with intellectual disabilities deserve is "respect." While it feels a bit forced, it's a worthwhile sentiment and actually should've possibly played before the film as one of the many commercials or trailers as opposed to being buried in a separate menu of Thunder's first disc.

However, fans can rejoice in Thunder mania that fills the entirety of the second disc as we discover co-writer, director and star Ben Stiller's passion for his screenplay that dates back twenty years. In "Before the Thunder," Stiller notes that while he was busy making one of his first and most important screen appearances in a bit part in Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, most of his friends were auditioning for the war movies that were incredibly popular in the late 80's such as Platoon and Hamburger Hill. Noting the ridiculousness of actors who shared with him that their two week boot camp really helped them get into character and bond, Stiller became inspired by the absurdity of pampered actors not realizing how very different it is to actually be in a war as opposed to a movie about war and initially toyed with the premise of a group of actors returning from movie boot camp with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Upon realizing that he just couldn't find away to make it work comically, he set it aside until ten years later when he and actor Justin Theroux (Charlies Angels 2, Mulholland Drive) began e-mailing back and forth various scenes they wrote in the hopes of keeping each other laughing. It's easy to get caught up in Stiller's twenty year passion with Thunder's excellently packaged DVD set as we go into each and every extra which run the gamut from standard "pat each other on the back" electronic press kit generic enthusiasm to some truly hilarious and inventive additions including a fake Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness styled documentary called "Rain of Madness" which chronicles the fake "movie within the movie" and another similar bonus dubbed "Dispatches from the Edge of Madness."

In numerous candid behind-the-scenes interviews and clips including original videotapes from the auditions and various tests, we discover just how damn funny the film's straight man played by Jay Baruchel actually is as we glimpse the film's epic table reading and the way that Downey managed to just launch into his character head-first in a way that made Baruchel share that, "I hadn't laughed this much since Dick Cheney shot that guy in the face." With Downey admitting that they aren't satirizing Hollywood on the same level as Altman's brilliant Player by joking that "we're kind of destroying any leg [we have] to stand on in the future," in Stiller's lampoon styled "love letter to what we do," we realize just how much effort was put into making the comical film look so professional.

In "The Hot LZ," "Blowing Shit Up," "Designing the Thunder," and more, we witness some of the epic undertakings by Stiller and company, whether it's creating a cinematic compilation mix tape of their favorite war scenes for the epic opening sequence which took three weeks and fifty stuntmen to shoot or gauging the level of explosion offered up by the special effects man who Stiller says may be "slightly insane but in a good way," during the incredibly complicated shoot by veteran 2-time Oscar winning cinematographer John Toll (Legends of the Fall, Braveheart, Thin Red Line).

In an entertaining special feature dedicated to "The Cast of the Thunder" which is broken down by the last name of each actor, the cast members riff on their own characters as well as their cast-mates discussing what must have been a creatively freeing shoot filled with improvisation and laughter as well as interesting surprises as the American Humane Association handler for Bertha the water buffalo that carries Jack Black unexpectedly delivered a baby that they named after the comedic actor.

Also including deleted and extended scenes as well as "full mags," to illustrate the number of choices that were made by Stiller and his editor, we finally discover just what happens to Matthew McConaughey's character at the end of the film and learn that the scene stealing dance by a nearly unrecognizable Tom Cruise was the brainchild of Cruise himself, who impulsively started dancing without music during a makeup test.

Featuring promotional material as well-- one amusing bonus consisted of a great MTV Movie Awards promotional spoof as Stiller, Black and Downey all toy with each other's egos by trying to figure out the best way to sell their movie. While it's nearly impossible to absorb the plethora of features included on the disc or listen to all of the available and optional commentary, the 2-Disc Director's Cut really makes one appreciate Thunder on an entirely different level.

Moreover, it makes one realize just how easy it is to overlook the master craftsmanship behind everything as we're far too busy laughing at the performances to fully appreciate the effects, production design and stunning cinematography that makes it seem nearly as authentic as the films it references, even so much as to set up the DVD menus as though we were getting ready to watch Platoon or Apocalypse Now. Of course, once the movie begins with fake ads for "The Fatties" and "Booty Sweat," we realize we aren't exactly in Oliver Stone territory... but it's always nice to escape the realities of war by laughing at men rushing out to go fake one.

New on DVD for the Week of 9/21

The Foot Fist Way

Samantha Who? Season 1

Sex and the City: The Movie


Amazon Links and More DVD Releases
(Stay Tuned for Additional Reviews)

The Foot Fist Way

In the words of Fred Simmons, “Jujitsu sucks”; it’s
time for Tae Kwon Do, or more appropriately
its translation, “Foot Fist Way.”

How does one begin to describe Fred Simmons (played by Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express scene stealer Danny McBride)? From the highbrow evaluation of the man as “the type of blustery, provincial narcissist who is always putting his foot in his mouth and absolutely loving how it tastes,” as Nathan Lee offered in The New York Times to the more straightforward call-it-like-he-sees-it approach offered by Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers who sums him up in two words — “loudmouthed bully” — there’s no way of getting around the fact that McBride and his co-writers Ben Best and Jody Hill have created one unforgettable character in their film The Foot Fist Way.

In my eyes (and I'm sure I'm not alone), he’s the white trash version of Ricky Gervais’ character David Brent from BBC’s The Office. In fact, had Brent been not only real but had a twin from whom he was separated at birth — I’d lay odds on the fact that it would be none other than Fred Simmons.

The self-centered Tae Kwon Do instructor with delusions of grandeur runs a low-level suburban studio and recruits students as “The King of the Demo” in local North Carolina parking lots along with his sycophantic youthful sidekicks Julio (Spencer Moreno) and Henry Harrison (Carlos Lopez). Moreover, Simmons spends most of his time acting in ways that would give Miss Manners a heart attack. With virtually no filter from his head to his mouth, he is also prone — like David Brent — to making extremely unethical and unprofessional requests and comments of and to his students. Whether it’s nearly sending an elderly lady to the morgue after instructing a young man to come at her with all he has since he questions Simmons’ methods, wailing on children, telling one gentleman who balks at the prices that he’s fat and feminine or blaming his sidekicks when he messes up in his routine by addressing their lack of confidence, Simmons is — much like David Brent — the boss from hell still clinging to a championship title won in Vegas years earlier.

After he’s cheated on by his bimbo wife Suzie (Mary Jane Bostic), a woman who defends granting sexual favors to fit in by saying she was as "Myrtle Beach drunk" as their beach-like home décor, Simmons goes off the deep end. And although anyone with half a brain saw the Suzie debacle coming a mile away as she’s fond of wearing skin tight leotards and off the shoulder Flashdance apparel to church, photocopying her “naughty bits” at work and making a ranked list of coworkers who would be the most likely to freak out and go on a shooting spree, we quickly realize that mate-wise, she’s probably the best a guy like Simmons could do.

But that doesn’t prevent him from attempting to play the field such as in an excruciatingly Office-like scene wherein he comes on to one young woman (in a manner similar to Brent) by saying that since he already has all of her personal information like phone number and address, there’s no real need to go through the “weird schematics” of actually asking her out. However, what he fails to realize is that perhaps it wasn’t the biggest turn-on that the married Simmons was the very same man who freaked her into signing up for lessons by discussing that her admiration of yoga and meditation never saved “anyone from a gang rape type situation.”

The film, which is divided up into the admirable, selfless, and peaceful tenets of Tae Kwon Do (which translates literally to “foot fist way”) has loads of fun showing the irony of a man like Simmons who embodies the polar opposite of his teachings. The film is beyond hilarious and even far more so than Napoleon Dynamite, the film to which it’s most likely compared. Yet for roughly the first half, once other subplots begin to overpower the madness of David Brent… er, I mean Fred Simmons and he takes to the road with his intense and possibly psychotic friend Mike (director Jody Hill) to meet their idol, Chuck “The Truck” Wallace (a hilarious Ben Best playing a Chuck Norris/Steven Seagal hybrid), the film loses some of its momentum.

Far better off when it was a martial arts styled version of The Office than as an impromptu road film, the last twenty minutes falls into intense mediocrity during a horrifically vulgar tell-off to Suzie as Simmons literally pisses away their relationship through a superfluous contest montage between Simmons and The Truck. Then — making one rank Dynamite above it for its more consistently funny tone — Foot at least refuses to go out without a fight. Serving up some truly quotable lines—especially from The Truck who makes strange propositions like “Who wants me to see me with my shirt off?” and confronts Simmons’ group with “you think it’s cool to just come into my party and beat up the band?” before admitting that he himself finds it awesome, it will be the type of film to gain even greater cult status when it kicks DVD shelves on September 23.

Proudly using Roger Ebert’s assessment that “children should not be allowed with a mile of this film,” as a selling point in a sticker on the box, the underground, cult comedy hit The Foot Fist Way -- made “for two cents” and “shot in 19 days” — has made its long journey from the Los Angeles Film Festival to theatrical release and DVD distribution thanks to the ardent support of two die-hard fans, namely Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Their love for the film is so resolute that it’s even the major narrative thread running throughout the hysterical green band version of the film’s trailer they posted on their rousingly hilarious and irreverent website Funny or Die (a.k.a. the more consistently comedic answer to YouTube) that you can see below.

View the Trailer

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

While it will be widely available for rental, director Jody Hill’s movie from Paramount Vantage and MTV Films will be exclusively for sale at Best Buy. Loaded with bonus footage that salvages some of its weaknesses including commentary by Hill and McBride, bloopers, English, French and Spanish subtitles, and 5.1 surround sound, the widescreen DVD also provides twenty extended and/or deleted scenes and an alternate ending for Simmons’ devotees to explore.

While it’s uneven at best, when the film works, it really works, sending you into hysterics by the frankly matter-of-fact and deadpan delivery by a scarily convincing McBride who elevates this film and makes quite a name for himself, leading to future work alongside some of Hollywood’s funniest men in Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express. Although David Brent would be green with envy, no doubt Fred Simmons is proud to keep kicking ass to a much larger audience who will eagerly seek out this little indie that could.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Read the 2-Disc DVD Review

Director: Ben Stiller

Former highbrow theatrical director turned filmmaker Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) is in trouble. When the explosives expert (Pineapple Express scene stealer Danny McBride) working on his big budget Vietnam epic film debut misinterprets Cockburn’s temper tantrum for a cue, four million dollars in explosives are wasted, everything is blown to smithereens, and the worst thing is that the camera wasn’t even rolling. Unable to control the actors on his set and already one month behind schedule after just five days of shooting, the British thespian is soon punched in the face very hard by a grip, upon orders shouted via webcam by sleazy studio boss Les Grossman (a hilarious and nearly unrecognizable Tom Cruise).

Out of desperation, he turns to Nick Nolte’s Four Leaf Tayback, the former Vietnam soldier who wrote the book they are adapting — not to mention the type soldier who may not have gotten the memo that the war is over. Visibly relishing his role, Nolte’s Tayback is often framed in a corner spouting off sentence fragments and irrational, obscenity-laced anecdotes that frighten and amuse all at the same time. Advising the mild-mannered Brit to get the actors “off the f***in’ grid” and into “the s***,” Cockburn heeds Tayback’s advice. With the hope that improvisational filmmaking will get the movie back on track, he sets up his “own little personal slice of ‘Nam.”

However, shortly after depositing his cast of five diverse leads deep into the heart of the jungle in order to show his pampered actors he’s really running the show, things go terribly, shockingly wrong. And soon enough the cast find themselves in a real life mini-war of their own when instead of guerilla filmmaking, the men become the target of heroin-trafficking guerillas who’ve mistaken them for DEA soldiers (yeah, I didn’t get that either). Obviously, this proves to be much more than the actors can handle, as they’d signed on with their contractual clauses for perks like gift baskets, TiVo, and luxury items, only to find themselves dodging bullets instead.

Heading up the group is Tropic Thunder’s director and co-writer Ben Stiller as Tugg Speedman, a has-been, Rambo-styled action star whose most recent film wherein he played a mentally challenged character — Simple Jack — not only ruined his career but was also named one of the worst films of all time. With his barefooted agent (Matthew McConaughey) behind him, Speedman tries to get back into Hollywood’s spotlight but is worried he’ll be upstaged by his costar, the five time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr. channeling Russell Crowe), an Australian method actor so committed to his craft that he underwent skin pigmentation surgery in order to play an African-American for Cockburn’s film.

While admittedly it’s a risky move to play “blackface,” Downey loses himself completely in the role. He’s a tongue-in-cheek marvel the entire way; vowing to stay in character until he records the DVD commentary track, he immerses himself in a sort of Black Power homage to '70s stars like Richard Roundtree in a way that makes one giggle even before he opens his mouth to deliver another questionably politically incorrect line.

Of course, this is much to the chagrin of the cast’s real African-American actor, Brandon T. Jackson’s Alpa Chino. Still annoyed that the only good black role in the film was given to “Crocodile Dundee,” Chino, who hopes the film will up his credibility from just peddling his soft drink Booty Sweat, doesn’t let him get away with anything, especially when Lazarus lectures him about the “n word” and Chino calls him out on quoting the theme song from TV’s The Jeffersons.

Rounding out the group is Jack Black’s troubled comedian Jeff Portnoy. Much like the other characters we first meet in a series of fake trailers preceding the film, Portnoy is hoping the film will prove his range as well, since he’s mostly known for his drug arrests and overly flatulence-based humor starring in Eddie Murphy-like comedies with titles like "The Fatties: Fart 2". However, when his drug stash gets lost amidst the chaos of their new surroundings, he begins to suffer from withdrawal in a series of escalating scenes with range from disgusting (trying to eat an animal who ingested his last supply) to hilarious as he orders the men to tie him to a tree when they realize they have to storm the drug dealer’s compound in order to rescue Speedman who erroneously assumed this was all part of the movie. Why tie him to a tree? So he won’t do all the heroin in sight, Portnoy explains in a twisted but freakishly logical speech.

Of course, there’s the obligatory straight man played by likable Jay Baruchel as Kevin Sandusky but he’s mostly ignored by the hammy antics of our leads. Filled with Hollywood in-jokes, the film at times feels like an overly long Comedy Central roast of the industry, as each character gets to exorcise their demons and impersonate those they’ve encountered in Tinsletown. And while — much like the funny but uneven Zoolander — there’s enough good stuff involved to keep you interested, you can’t help thinking you’re watching a series of skits that were awkwardly stretched into a feature length film.

From the ads, one would assume that Downey is the highlight and indeed, of the main cast, he’s the one we can’t take our eyes off of, managing to show his chameleon-like nature and astronomical depth following turns in Iron Man, Charlie Bartlett and last year’s brilliant, underrated Zodiac.

However, this being said, the true revelation of the film is none other than former couch jumping Scientologist poster boy, Tom Cruise. Yes, you read that correctly — as the smarmy, amoral, balding, bespectacled, gold chain wearing, chest hair revealing, profanity driven studio head who likes to freak dance to Flo Rida, Tom Cruise all but steals the entire film away from everyone else. In fact, it’s similar to the way that Ben Stiller guest starred in one of Mission Impossible 2’s best spoofs (included on the DVD) as Cruise’s obsessive stunt double.

Playing it ridiculous couldn’t have been a better professional decision for Cruise, given the scathing media attacks and popular opinion backlash over the past few years. Additionally, he reminds us again, just how good he can be when he isn’t preoccupied by arguing with Matt Lauer or criticizing Brooke Shields. While it’s safe to say his role is a composite of many types, as are a majority of the characters featured in the film, Grossman’s overreliance on Diet Coke did make me recall that it’s also the beverage of choice of a certain former head of Miramax (although, like Cruise’s characterization, I’ll let you do your homework in discovering the identity).

As far as his directorial career goes, it’s Stiller’s most ambitious film and it’s certainly impressively executed as it begins with an outstanding sequence that pays homage to the film’s greatest influences, Apocalypse Now and Platoon. However, it’s also guilty of Stiller’s comedic tendency towards “everything and the kitchen sink,” in trying to squeeze in far too much, preferring quantity over quality. Ultimately, I realized the film may have been better off if it had either dropped his character altogether or blended his with the underused Baruchel or Jack Black’s, in order to make the comedy more consistent and strengthen the storyline.

And while on the surface, that may seem like a crazy idea, in the words of Downey’s memorable Kirk Lazarus, “Crazy’s better than nothin’.” Fortunately, while not nearly as hilarious as most critics would have you believe, Tropic Thunder is elevated far above “crazy” or “nothin’,” thanks mostly to the always memorable Downey. However, the real saving grace is again in the surprisingly hysterical turn by Cruise that actually kept viewers in their seats during the credits to see him continue to dance with the most joy since he slid through the entryway in his socks in Risky Business.

Pineapple Express (2008)

Director:
David Gordon Green


Let me lay a few images on you: 1) Environmental activist and electric car poster boy Ed Begley Jr. packing heat and dropping f-bombs like pocket change. 2) Petite Rosie Perez putting the smack down on James Franco. 3) Danny McBride baking a cake to commemorate the birthday of his dead cat. 4) Seth Rogen feeling insecure when he meets his high school girlfriend’s hot male classmate who’s wowed her, not with his muscles, but his ability to do a killer Jeff Goldblum impression.

No, my friend, these are not hallucinations. Instead, welcome to director David Gordon Green’s stoner comedy Pineapple Express, which, paying homage to Spike Lee’s term-of-choice, could be called a "Judd Apatow Joint." Emulating 70’s stoner classics from its opening credits, Express gets a much-needed credibility boost, as award-winning writer/director David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls, George Washington) and his talented cinematographer Tim Orr turn what could have been a Harold and Kumar meets Cheech and Chong rip-off into something that’s more beautifully photographed and painstakingly edited than one would assume such a comedy should be.

Yet, that’s not to say it’s George Washington 2. In producer Apatow’s Pineapple Express, "everybody must get stoned" and in the process, laugh themselves silly. That’s right, in the latest trippy offering from the informal Judd Apatow School of Comedic Filmmaking, following Knocked Up, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and Superbad, co-screenwriter and star Seth Rogen plays a process server with two passions in life: weed and talk radio.

When he isn’t donning elaborate costumes to surprise his “targets” with subpoenas, Rogen’s Dale Denton can usually be found driving down the highway, joint and steering wheel in one hand, and cell phone in the other, spouting off his own life lessons to whatever unfortunate DJ happens to be on the air. Tackling every issue, from his obvious ardent support of the legalization of marijuana, to trying to justify to the world—and disbelieving audiences—his improbable relationship with Angie (Amber Heard) a pretty, eighteen year old blonde, Dale coasts through his days, seemingly without any greater ambition than receiving the perfect smoke and giving the perfect pearl of wisdom.

While the logic of Dale and Angie: The Couple, makes as much sense as Leah Remini and Kevin James on The King of Queens, Rogen and his co-writer Evan Goldberg manage to cull a great deal of unexpected humor from the situation as Dale proceeds to surprise Angie with a visit in two of the film’s funniest scenes. The first occurs early into Express, when he arrives at her high school and gets busted by faculty within minutes; then, in one of the most uproarious sequences, after he shows up, bleeding and dirty, for dinner with her parents on an evening gone horribly wrong. However, in this instance - as in every time he’s paired alongside James Franco - Rogen is instantly upstaged by Angela’s father, played by Ed Begley Jr. as an uncharacteristic and downright hysterical Clint Eastwood type, eager to unload his rifle into his daughter’s loser beau.

Why is Dale bleeding and dirty, you might ask? Well, it’s a long story, but keeping the dwindling attention spans of the target stoner crowd in mind, it can best be summed up in one name: Saul Silver. Shortly after Dale agrees to Angie's request to finally meet the parents, he predictably retreats to his loyal drug dealer’s house, to take the edge off before continuing on to deliver the rest of his assigned subpoenas.

Like Begley, by playing against type, serious Golden Globe winning actor James Franco (TV’s James Dean) manages to score the greatest laughs by seemingly channeling both Brad Pitt in True Romance and Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High in his role as the perpetually stoned drug dealer, Saul Silver. Ridiculously clueless and desperately lonely, save for his adoration for his elderly grandmother, Saul is the type of dealer who claims "lingerers" are bummers yet when it comes to his relationship with his client of two months-- Dale-- he tries to lure him into hanging out by any means necessary.

Like most potheads, Saul’s conversation changes topics from one moment to the next, and Franco shows amazing untapped comedic potential by nailing every joke right from the start, gaining our empathy and winning us over with his portrayal of a morally questionable yet lovable loser. While he’s unable to persuade Dale into staying, either by watching The Jeffersons on one of his two televisions airing different programs simultaneously, or with his satellite radio, Dale can’t resist the chance to light Saul’s unusual “cross joint.” Additionally, while Saul pawns off low-quality fare to his less-deserving clientèle, Dale realizes that he’s been sold the first batch of high quality "Pineapple Express" pot (which Saul claims is the “dopest dope” he’s ever smoked); it’s so good that Saul explains it’s nearly a shame to smoke it since it’s “like killing a unicorn.”

Unfortunately, after Dale leaves his dealer’s apartment to serve one last subpoena, he experiences the ultimate buzz-kill when he witnesses an actual killing by sleazy drug kingpin Ted Jones (Office Space's Gary Cole) and Rosie Perez's crooked cop, Carol. During his chaotic escape, he leaves the rest of his joint at the scene of the crime, and sure enough, after discovering that Ted is Saul’s supplier, Saul and Dale have to flee their homes to outrun not only Ted and Carol, but also a duo of killers sent after the bumbling pair.

Comedic adventure ensues, and it starts out strong, with a genuinely hilarious evening spent in the woods (which goes from The Marx Brothers to The Blair Witch Project in a matter of seconds), then builds to even funnier effect when they encounter Saul’s double crossing, kimono wearing middle-man Red (a terrifically inventive Danny McBride).

But the film takes an ill-conceived turn when it replaces humor for ultra-violent action. The initial fight between Red, Dale and Saul recalls the creative high-jinks and absurdity of Cato Fong and Inspector Clouseau’s fights in the original Pink Panther movies and are excellently staged by Pineapple’s stunt coordinator Gary Hymes (Wanted, The Italian Job). The sight-gags have to be seen to be believed, as Saul jumps up and down on a portable phone in a shower, and Red hits Saul repeatedly with a dust-buster, but unfortunately, the humor and gags soon become increasingly violent.

Despite my belief that when it came to the Apatow trademark of earning its R rating to the "nth" degree, any alternative to the gross-out gags was preferable, the violence in Express crosses the line, especially in an overly long final battle that's shot to resemble a war film. Thus, much like its constantly dazed and confused characters, Pineapple Express throws the viewers off balance by the film’s constant questioning of its tone.

Green, Rogen, and Apatow never seem entirely sure whether they want to make the film a no-holds-barred action movie as homage to Tarantino, or just a buddy comedy turned “bromance,” as the relationship between Saul and Dale begins to blur the lines between comically genre-inspired homoeroticism (think Hot Fuzz and Top Gun) and the typical frat-pack feeling of similarly themed comedies such as Wedding Crashers or Talladega Nights. However, despite a funny, if far too brief performance by Rosie Perez, the film proves to be this week’s male answer to the release of The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants 2, or as Pineapple’s sexist Red would argue, “bros before hoes.”

Coming, as it does, right off the heels of the release of Step Brothers, and just before next week’s Ben Stiller comedy, Tropic Thunder, only time will tell how reliable the attention spans of audiences will be in remembering Pineapple as an unlikely Apatow joint.

Although the films are very different and I have yet to see Tropic Thunder, the laughter at the Pineapple screening was so raucous that I know I missed half the jokes. So despite fighting an overwhelming urge to look at my watch as its final battle raged on -- based on sheer entertainment value alone -- I think I'd go back to ride the Express once more before revisiting the humorous but unusually cruel, Step Brothers again.

And overwhelmingly, the wish for a repeat viewing would be to appreciate again the awe-inspiring range of Spiderman and Tristan and Isolde’s James Franco, in a role he plays so well that it’s a shame that comedies are frequently overlooked during awards season. However, if you want more reasons, just go back and reread the opening paragraph, where the price of admission is justified right there in black and white, in case your mind (like Saul's) has begun to wander.