Pineapple Express (15)

The new Star Wars and Indiana Jones might not be of the quality of the films I remember from my childhood but it was stoner comedy Pineapple Express that really made me realise I'm no longer a kid.

There's plenty to like in Pineapple Express, the follow up to last year's Superbad and Knocked Up, but the sum of its parts left me feeling both cold, and old.

Writer/star Seth Rogan is his usual affable self as yet another slacker with a heart of gold, this time called Dale Denton, a 25-year-old pothead with a dead end job, too-young girlfriend, and self-hatred issues.

The paper-thin plot concerns his witnessing a gangland murder and going on the run with his more-stoned-than-thou drug dealer Saul (amusingly played by James Franco who you may remember as Spiderman's broody nemesis/best friend Harry Osbourne).

It's a one-joke idea based on those buddies-on-the-run type movies so popular in the eighties (Midnight Run, The Blues Brothers, Stir Crazy) but with a pair of idiot weed heads as the heroes.

It's chock full of guffaw-inducing physical comedy, snidey off-camera jokes, and bizzaro characters, and Gary Cole of Midnight Caller fame puts in an amusing small-town take on the gangster bad guy stereotype.

Despite its many good qualities I found myself thinking it was pretty slight stuff that's going to be lapped up by weed smokers and students as a cult classic, but without the charm and intelligence of other films in that category, Withnail and I for instance.

I'm sure I would have loved it when I was nineteen so if you are nineteen or just enjoy immature messing about it'll probably hit your sweet spot.

If not it's throwaway stuff which wastes the talents of some of Hollywood's best rising stars.

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