Film Friday: Pineapple Depress

Now if there’s something you know about our Film Friday columns, it’s usually the place where we spout our opinions on films based on either the trailer or the reviews that we’ve read. But this week we have a dilemma! On which do we base our opinion of Pineapple Express?

It’s a dilemma, because if you’ve seen the trailer for Pineapple Express, you must agree that it makes the film look absolutely immense. Featuring M.I.A.’s "Paper Planes" on the soundtrack, it appeared to us to be trailering a vital and exciting work—one that would even get us over our boredom of the Judd Apatow clique—but seems like it might turn out to be just another trailer that does its best to obscure what the film is really like (you know, like most every trailer).

Eye’s Adam Nayman calls out the film—which opens this Wednesday, in case you think we’re talking about it a little early—as “an ecstatic celebration of adolescent crap” in a review seething with actual rage. It’s a little intense! So yes... not as good as we were hoping, maybe?

Out today is heavily-hyped doc American Teen. A documentary that casts the real lives of some random teenagers as a John Hughes–esque drama (well, sort of), it’s the latest in a line of documentaries that play with the techniques of filmmaking to build a narrative where there isn’t necessarily one to begin with (or just to juice it up a bit—see King of Kong, for example). Is it dishonest, or does it reveal greater truths? We like to side with the latter, but this film might cross some subtle line, with reviewers including NOW’s Radheyan Simonpillai bemoaning “calculated editing.”

Well, there’s always The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Brendan Fraser’s second big-budget film of the season and the latest in a franchise that has so far been the definition of “passably entertaining.” This one drops Rachel Weisz for Jet Li. Well, not exactly, though it would be amazing if he was replacing Weisz in her role (Maria Bello picks up the slack there). Few are impressed with the latest in the series, with, for example, the Sun’s Jim Slotek saying it’s a “sequel utterly devoid of a reason to exist.”

Also on release this week: Swing Vote (hey! A Kevin Costner film!), Bottle Shock, Closing the Ring, The Last Continent, and The World According to Monsanto.