Pineapple Express

Stoners have always been great movie fodder. From Cheech and Chong to Harold and Kumar there’s generally something funny to be found in the pot-smoking antics of a couple of guys who probably have more fun and excitement stoned than anyone in real life does, as they watch stoner movies, smoke up and wear an arse-groove into the seat of their favourite couch.

Directed by David Gordon Green, Pineapple Express again brings together the loosely termed ‘guys’ from Knocked Up and Superbad, this time including Judd Apatow as producer, Bill Hader, Seth Rogen (who wrote the script with pal Evan Goldberg) and James Franco.

Rogen, best known for knocking up Katherine Heigl and then not slapping her around like she deserved, plays Dale, a stoner who’s pretty happy with his lazy life, easy job, and highschool-aged girlfriend (Amber Heard). His new dealer, Saul (James Franco), is hooking him up with the good stuff, including a very new, rare strain named pineapple express. So rare, in fact, that when Dale accidentally witnesses a mob hit, drops the joint and runs, the bad guys can trace it directly back to him.

The most refreshing part about the film, as with most of the gang’s work, is the realism. Instead of doing the stupid things people usually do in this kind of caper, the characters actually think about what they’re doing, all the while stoned and terrified. Getting rid of mobile phones, not using credit cards, sleeping in the woods, and telling your girlfriend’s parents the truth are all things unexplored in this sort of film, when it’s what most of us would probably do if the bad girls were on our trail. There’s no eternal stamina and everlasting bullets here, and the film is all the funnier for it, playing real situations for genuine laughs.

The bad guys are just as funny. Gary Cole as the drug king is underplayed but indispensable when on-screen. Hitmen Budlofsky and Matheson (Kevin Corrigan and Craig Morrison) are evil mirror-images of our heroes, and are well drawn and entertaining, though bad-girl cop Rosie Perez feels like a bit of an afterthought.

Everything about this film is well crafted. The jokes fly thick and fast without being intrusive, melding easily into the already charming script. Rogen is at his best, and James Franco is a welcome surprise, with a winning comedic turn after more restrained roles of the Spiderman ilk. Supporting characters like dealer Red (Danny McBride) and girlfriend Angie are never wasted, and provide some of the best moments. Aesthetically, it’s gorgeous, and flows perfectly, the story always the focus among the whizbang special effects. It’s finally a dope movie with some balls, treating weed and its consequences as a valid subject instead of the mythical fantasy drug most movies make it out to be.

While not as funny or groundbreaking as 40 Year Old Virgin or Superbad, Pineapple Express shows the requisite realism and class comedy we’ve come to expect from the Apatow crew. Totally unmissable.

Steel Trap

I’ve said before how much I like horror games. To see people get hacked to bits, all in the name of a treasure hunt, a moral test, or a game of chance. Even if it’s a bit shaky, story wise, there’s always the promise of a good bit of grue, some bodily fluids, or something being punctured.

So in this mind I viewed Steel Trap, the latest offering from Dimension Extreme and director Luis Cámara.

Steel Trap is a case of good idea, bad execution. The story – a bunch of media-industry party goers get an intriguing invite to a private function and are viciously picked off during what they think is a treasure hunt – had a lot of potential for honest, messed-up fun. It’s too bad no-one involved could pull a single shred of talent out of their arseholes.

Instead, the movie consists of awful actors walking around dark corridors spouting ‘witty’ dialogue which, due to appalling sound design, sounds like it’s spoken underwater through a broken radio. Then there’s some blood. Then more walking and talking, before they make some monumentally stupid and unrealistic decisions, wow at the mysteries revealed, get picked off, and discover the unnecessary and terribly executed twist.

As far as horror goes, it’s totally missing in action. Aside from some nice mutilation near the beginning, there’s next to no gore. And while that can be used to create tension, Psycho this ain’t. Instead, it comes off as a weak slasher flick that just happens to be set in an abandoned building, where the ‘game’ aspect consists of a few badly inserted nursery rhymes and some carnival music which, considering they were all going to get uninspiredly slaughtered anyway, is totally redundant.

That said, it’s not totally unenjoyable. There are laughs galore as we watch badly drawn stereotypes say things that no-one would actually say, with less sincerity than a complimentary prostitute. The special effects are laughably bad, the direction is uninspired and lazy, and everything about it reeks of ineptitude. Especially the characters, who are so dumb they deserve to die for being completely useless in a crisis.

So, as a comedy, it’s actually not bad.

Meet The Spartans

After Epic Movie, I really wasn’t expecting much from Meet The Spartans. Surely a hideous, badly-made, laughter-devoid film such as Epic Movie couldn’t spawn a sequel remotely amusing or competent?

My expectations were pretty much correct.

Admittedly, Meet The Spartans isn’t as unfunny as it’s painfully retarded older brother. Not that I’m calling it amusing, by any means, but less reliance on copying other people’s work and replacing the word ‘Narnia’ with ‘Kazakhstan’ has to be a good thing. This travesty of a ‘comedy’ actually contains some jokes, if you define joke as putting a garbage disposal button on 300’s pit of death and kicking people into it for over five minutes. Hyuck hyuck.

As far as performance goes, it’s a case of down on their luck actors capitalising on their glory days. Kevin Sorbo’s turn as the Captain will make any Hercules fan weep inside, and the constant drawing of attention to his mythic past is like salt in a pustule-ridden wound. Carmen Electra plays a whore-queen, Ken Davitian (Borat) again gets naked as Xerxes. The supporting cast are obviously related to people who know the casting agents, because they're the parasites on the back of this dying vermin of a film, especially the girl that 'plays' Paris Hilton. It’s as no-brainer as the target audience. The only genuinely good work is Sean Maguire as Leonidas, who could have been destined for bigger and better things before this travesty was added to his resume.

Everything about this movie is insulting to anyone possessing a complete brain cell. Let’s face it, calling the Spartans from 300 gay wasn’t particularly insightful in the first place, so making an entire movie about the observation only serves to heighten the blatantly offensive stupidity possessed by most of the people who shelled out their $13. Not to mention the recurring song-and-dance scenes passed down from Epic Movie which are interminable, unfunny, and stretch out the running time to the required and excruciating 80 minutes. The sets look cheap, the costumes presumably fell off the back of the Salvo’s truck, and any attempts at special effects were probably knocked up by directors/writers/arseholes Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer during a drunken night in front of MSPaint. Not to mention the constant product placement.

In essence, Meet the Spartans is a bad movie, by no-talent ass-clowns, for people who think fart jokes are highbrow. Enjoy.

Battlefield Earth

What with the amount of money innocent celebrities seem to be sinking into the very legitimate religion of scientology, you have to wonder where that money ends up. Surely they’re not sending it to the alien souls they’re carting about, at least John Travolta isn’t. No, he’s sinking it into spreading the world of L Ron Hubbard. Or, more specifically, making god-awful flicks based on novels by his dead, insane saviour.

Often considered the worst film ever, it’s pretty difficult to find someone who’s actually watched this thing, aside from Tom Cruise, his brainwashed sex-bitch, and their mentally scarred, sub-primate offspring. But I’ve seen it, and I’m here to spread a little gospel of my own:

Watching Battlefield Earth is like being clit-deep in rancid shit.

This is just the first half of what was meant to be a two-parter, based on Hubbard’s sci-fi book. In the flick, Travolta is Terl, a corrupt security chief from the evil profit-obsessed planet Psychlo (I’m not making this up), whose people have enslaved the human race and given them radiation poisoning. A couple of bands of free human tribes are hanging about, wearing loincloths and discovering putt-putt courses, when one of them (Barry Pepper) is taken by the evil Psychlonians and Travolta decides to ‘educate’ him, not realising Pepper’s character Jonnie “Greener” Goodboy Tyler (still not making this up) is plotting to lead a human uprising against him.

I don’t even know what the worst part is. Travolta’s acting, which ranges between an American accent, an English accent, and grunting Psychlo gibberish; the direction by Roger Christian, whose skills basically encompass the ability to put every moment without speech into slow motion (without which it would have been mercifully shorter), as well as tilting his camera on an angle for the whole film; the hideous, self-congratulatory, stupidity-inducing dialogue; the special effects, which have a lovely blurred photoshop look, or that Travolta gives good enough head that Forest Whitaker agreed to co-star.

There is nothing right about this film. Almost everyone with the slightest bit of intelligence looks like they know the ship is going down, except of course for Travolta, whose yellow contacts don’t do much to hide the religious glaze in his eyes. And if this embarrassment wasn’t enough, we have to watch it with the camera on a perpetual angle. Word to the director – this does not create a sense of transition, unease, and chaos. It makes you look like a self-important arsehole. Just like everyone else who actually believed in this movie.

This isn’t one of those movies that works if you’re drunk. It’s not so bad it’s good. It’s not even so bad it’s laughable. Battlefield Earth is a soul-crushing, interminable experience with no entertainment value whatsoever unless you like looking at Travolta’s leather-clad cock. And I don’t mean that figuratively.