Pineapple Express

I enjoyed, late last night, seeing the actors Seth Rogen and James Franco in David Gordon Green's film of a story conceived by Judd Apatow with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (the screenplay is Rogen and Goldberg's work): Pineapple Express. Their performances, as a weed-smoking process server, and a weed-selling layabout, were good: believable, with details true to the characters, who are, incidentally, Jewish (Rogen played the process server as smart, insecure, mercurial; and Franco played the salesman as casual, needy, funky). The story is driven by the process server's witnesssing of a murder, and the fact that he can be tracked by the cigarette he left near the scene, a unique blend of weed that he was sold. It was interesting to see that what is satire now are things we all know to look for--the no longer buried male need for other men (the homoemotional/homoerotic); and in the film, as some commentators have pointed out, that can occur in certain slippages of language, certain "accidental" incidents of physical closeness, etc. That the slippages and accidents are blatant and crude are a great part of the humor. It was funny to see some of the other characters in the film--would-be tough guys who "read" as unusually emotional, as possibly feminine, and as more likely "queer" than anything else even as they mention wives or girlfriends. (There is also the satire of the betraying friend, played by Danny McBride, who redeems himself--after being attacked multiple times.) Male friendship, and how masculinity threatens it and makes it possible, could be considered the theme of the movie...Ultimately, the men connect on a personal level that is very particular to who each is, something that might be beyond masculinity...Anyway, I laughed a lot, as did most of the people in the theater (a theater on 34th Street, off 8th avenue, one I rarely go to, unfortunately: it was big, attractive, and so hard to monitor by the small and young staff on duty on a very rainy night that I saw a couple of kids sneak into the film after coming from another)...