Role Models and Pineapple Express, both from 2008, both 3 Stars, both available in "Unrated" DVD editions.
In the life of a film critic, there occasionally arises a kind of inner conflict between the entertainment lover and the film snob within. Sometimes a film is so entertaining that the snob approves; sometimes a film is so unpleasant that both sides disagree. But occasionally, for healthy, well-rounded critics LIKE MYSELF, a movie comes around that is really enjoyable without actually reaching the filmic level of "good."
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you two such movies.
These pictures, Role Models and Pineapple Express bear nothing in common other than the trait just mentioned and the one I brought up in the title of this post. They're both about pairs of total douchebags who are sort of friends as the films start and best friends when they end. How two movies with such a core value in common could be so vastly different is, I suppose, a testament to the power of human storytelling.
One difference between the two is what they appeared to be aiming for. The former was your traditional, hard-cracking buddy comedy, gunning for laughs and sometimes winning them. The latter film aimed for nothing higher than the designation of "stoner comedy," and, á la Cheech and Chong, threw in some raucous action, blood, and gunfights. It aimed low, and it hit the mark. But where Role Models seemed to be trying too hard to make us laugh with old antics like crude sex jokes, naked body parts, and kids saying "boobies," Pineapple Express suffered a bit from its own laziness. Perhaps that could be considered a virtue for a movie about potheads, but I couldn't help but imagine entire sections of the script reading "The two run around screaming. Continue until everyone has forgotten why they are doing so, which is, in fact, for no reason at all."
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