Read my five favorite things about the 2008 comedy Pineapple Express.
1. “I thought hurricane season was over”: One of the early scenes of the movie shows Saul sitting in his apartment by himself, watching an episode of 227 and laughing out loud and repeating the jokes to himself. As soon as I saw this scene I thought to myself “I like this character”. Just the fact that he was able to find that much joy in an obscure sitcom from the 80’s said a lot about him. I liked his character throughout the whole film and this definitely raised my enjoyment of the movie overall. Also, his pants are awesome.
2. When Dale and Saul beat up Red: This is a great fight scene because they are able to make it pretty brutal while also making it something you can laugh at. The best part is that they don’t have any music in the scene. You know the mood based off the actors, so you don’t need a goofy song to cue humor. They delivered some good lines and used some realistic stunt work to make the fight stand out. Even out of context the fight is entertaining. If you had no idea who the characters were and what caused the fight, you could still get a lot of enjoyment out of watching it and I think that is a good measure of any fight scene.
3. The windshield that didn’t break like in the movies: I like scenes like this in modern films. Saul tries to kick out a broken windshield on the advice of Dale so that they can see while driving. Instead of the entire windshield popping out like you would generally see in a movie, his foot goes through and gets stuck. Very funny scene and helps you get into the film by making it seem more realistic. I appreciate that films are trying to get away from older cliches of the past and this is one of the first instances I recall of this.
4. Saul eating the sandwich while crying: I’m not overstating this when I say that this is one of my all time favorite scenes in film history. Saul and Dale have just finished arguing and have temporarily split ways. There is a short montage of them dealing with that, and for Saul’s scene, he is sitting on a swing, eating a sandwich, and bawling his eyes out. I know it’s all based off of weed humor, that he is still hungry despite being that upset, but seeing this image always makes me laugh based off how ridiculous it looks.
5. The diner scene: The last great scene of Pineapple Express is after everything goes down. Saul, Dale and Red are getting some food at a diner waiting for Saul’s bubbeh to pick them up. They are reminiscing about all the shit that just went down and how close they have gotten. It’s a cool scene because the movie could’ve ended right before it and that would have been fine. Instead, they wrapped up the movie in a really memorable way that added a few more laughs and some warm feelings. It was a great way to end such a good movie.
Did you like Pineapple Express? What are some of your favorite things about it?