THE Pineapple Express, the latest comedy from the team behind Superbad and Knocked Up, has opened at the American box office at No.2 following encouraging reviews.

Billed as “an action comedy stoner film”, The Pineapple Express finds stoner Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) preparing to visit his equally lazy dealer Saul Silver (James Franco) to purchase weed – and specifically, a rare new strain called Pineapple Express.

But when Dale becomes the only witness to a murder by a crooked cop and the city’s most dangerous drug lord, he panics and dumps his roach of Pineapple Express at the scene.

Dale now has another reason to visit Saul: to find out if the weed is so rare that it can be traced back to him. And it is. So, Dale and Saul run for their lives and quickly discover they’re not suffering from weed-fueled paranoia, but that the bad guys are hot on their trail and trying to figure out the fastest way to kill them.

Directed by David Gordon Green and written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, with Judd Apatow as producer, The Pineapple Express was inspired by the character Brad Pitt played in the Tony Scott classic, True Romance.

According to some reports, Apatow “thought it would be funny to make a movie in which you follow that character out of his apartment and watch him get chased by bad guys”.

Rogen, during the publicity for Knocked Up last year, said that the film – a long-held personal project – was also “kind of our experiment to see if we could do action”.

“There’s still a lot of comedy in it, so it felt a little safer,” he explained. “But I love that movie. To me, it’s incredibly original – a weed-themed action comedy, which you don’t see very often.

“We really set out to make our favourite movie of all time – and it really is. James Franco is in it and he’s hysterical. It’s an oddly sweet movie about the pot dealer/pot buyer relationship and I really seem to be able to relate to it in a strange way.

“David Gordon Green [of Undertow fame] directed it and he’s awesome – but he’s going to confuse a lot of really smart film people. I’m really proud of it.”

US reaction

The film opened in America with a $22.4 million weekend gross – and could have made the No.1 spot were it not for the continuing dominance of The Dark Knight, or the fact that distributor Sony opted to open the picture two days earlier than usual, on a Wednesday, to maximize sales during the school holidays.

Hence, the five-day total for the film stands at $40.5 million (as of Sunday, August 10, 2008).

Critics, too, were generally positive about the film, describing it as funny and scatter shot, while keeping a steady tempo of low ball laughs.

The Hollywood Reporter, for instance, wrote that it’s “a drug-fueled caper that doesn’t stint on chronically loopy characters and ridiculously funny situations”.

While USA Today wrote: “You don’t have to be in an altered state to appreciate the ludicrous humor. The laughs – mostly crude, profane and drug-addled – are almost non-stop.”

Roger Ebert, of The Chicago Sun-Times, stated: “Pineapple Express is the answer to the question, ‘What would happen if a movie like this was made by a great director?’”

And Rolling Stone happily declared that “Rogen, Franco and McBride are on the march into stoner legend”.

Entertainment Weekly, meanwhile, rounds up this overview by stating: “Pineapple Express is a fitfully amusing tale of drugs and crooks and general dilapidation, but the more it goes on, and the loopier it gets, the less it connects with experience. It becomes Apatow’s hash-bar version of a cynical action joyride.”

The film opens in UK cinemas on September 12, 2008. Watch the trailer or view photos

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