Generally, I'm anti- stupid, vulgar comedies and I avoid them, partially out of intellectual/film snobbery and mainly because of moral convictions. I also don't like that I could never in good conscience recommend some of these movies to friends or family.

So it pains me a bit to say that Pineapple Express, the latest shindig from the Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen gang, was actually entertaining. I had fun watching this offensive, pot-smoking caper unfold, and director David Gordon Green (of whose Undertow I am a fan) steps up the cinematic quality by adding some visual storytelling style to what could be just another crude comedy.

Now, before you go rushing to the theater, let me make it clear: Pineapple Express was funny, and thankfully, not overflowing with a vulgar sex-obsessed storyline, but it's another dumb pothead movie, regardless of the filmmakers' intentions. Star and co-writer Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) said in an interview that he didn't want want Pineapple Express to be just another pothead movie; he wanted to make pot-smoking more commonplace and accepted in films, citing The 40 Year Old Virgin, as the first of their ilk's films to insert scenes of nonchalant pot-smoking.

Pineapple follows Dale Denton (Rogen), a potsmoking process server who buys a rare strain of marijuana called Pineapple Express from his needs-a-friend dealer, Saul, played by James Franco. One night while on a job, Dale witnesses a murder by a drug lord and a dirty cop, and accidentally drops his joint nearby as he flees the scene. Since the weed is so rare, he and Saul are easy to track down. And so the murderers are after them, as hilarious hijinks ensue.

The story is reminiscent of other pot-infused, crime-comedy caper, buddy movies like The Big Lebowski, Half Baked, How High, etc. In that sense, it's not original. But there is a certain well-crafted quality to the movie, not in terms of story structure, but in the way it's put together. It could be the director, but whatever the case, it certainly makes it a different kind of stoner movie. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, though.

Funny and strange, filled with the regular cast of Apatow slacker schlubs, Pineapple Express continues in the vein of Super Bad and Knocked Up, revealing what's apparently going on the filmmakers' hormone-driven minds. Unfortunately, America may think that Apatow and Rogen speak for all men when they portray them as clubhopping, sex-obsessed, potheads who refuse to grow up—and that it's okay to be that way, because, as these movies suggest, all men really are like that. It may be obvious, but I feel the need to say that these guys don't speak for the rest.

It's unfortunate to think that this movie will probably enforce beliefs that it's totally okay to be high all the time, and that it's perfectly fine for grown men to act like they never matured past third grade. Co-writers Seth Rogen (pro-weed) and Judd Apatow (anti-weed) reportedly disputed over the film's message regarding the use of pot. However, there is a somber moment in Pineapple where Dale and Saul get fed up with each other and life because of everything going wrong. The filmmakers get to slip in a "our lives suck because we're always high" moment which I think works, even if it's sort of forgotten by the end.

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