Link: Can Violence be Funny (Pineapple Express)
Posted by Nirav | Filed under Movies
My new friend Allie hit my problem with Pineapple Express on the nose, and I didn’t even know what it was until I read her post. After a careful background of her love for Judd Apatow films, she continues:
I offer all of this as a preface because I’m feeling kind of lukewarm about Pineapple Express, and I’m not entirely sure why. It’s not that the movie isn’t funny — I laughed out loud during it, many times in fact. I’m just not sure that its overall subject matter is necessarily something that should be mined for humor. Yes, it’s about stoners, but after its first third, the movie isn’t really about pot at all. It’s an action movie, and a pretty violent one at that.
And of course, she’s absolutely right. I really was expecting this to be stoner movie, and that’s a movie that I would have enjoyed. But then it transitioned to being a pseudo-realistic action movie, and I just lost interest. I like action, but not gratuitous violence and death.
Being a comedy, I’d expect the action sequences to at least be funny, like the horrifyingly nervous-giggle-inducing Very Bad Things. But instead, as Allie concludes:
I don’t have a lot of taboos in my brain, and I enjoyed the hell out of every single one that Team Apatow has broken, but violence seems to just be something that isn’t really rife with humor for me.
She does yet hold out hope for “Team Apatow”, and tentatively, I do too. It remains to be seen where his movies are going; I hope it’s not in the direction of Pineapple Express.
Via, of course, Allie on biggest mirror.