George Washington Gets on the Pineapple Express

We're not really so sure what to make of Pineapple Express, the new Judd Apatow-Seth Rogen movie opening Boston-wide today. Apatow produced comedies are maddeningly inconsistent: for every Knocked Up there's a Walk Hard; for every 40-Year-Old Virgin there's a Celtic Pride, a movie so mediocre that had the Celtics not won the title people would no doubt be referring to the Curse of Dan Aykroyd.

But unlike other Apatow comedies, Pineapple Express features a first-rate director in David Gordon Green, a man best known for challenging films about poverty and deindustrialization. Roger Ebert aptly described Express as "the answer to the question, 'What would happen if a movie like this was made by a great director?'" As such, it's also unlikely evidence in the debate over whether the director should be considered the film's author (the auteur theory) or simply a stylist. From the trailer alone, it's clear that Green's brought many of his trademark stylistic elements to the film. The cinematography is immediately reminiscent of All the Real Girls, with the world painted in Green's customary yellowish tinge.

Green's style was defined in his brilliant first feature George Washington. Heavily influenced by Terrence Malick, Green created a moving portrait of impoverished Southern society that had film critics rushing to use words like "Faulknerian" and struggling to find synonyms for "poetic." Washington tells the story of a group of children as they experience life and tragedy, struggling for salvation and maturity. There aren't any real grown-ups in the movie as the adults are emotionally stunted or intellectually repressed, but that's part of what gives the film its air of myth. It's a timeless world: even though the official government photo of George H. W. Bush hangs on the wall there's the sense that the portrait is less that of a President than a piece of high found art, or, just as likely, trash from a junkyard. Rather than distract, these stylistic touches further the film's plot, and many shots are truly haunting for their emotional intensity.

At its core, George Washington is about the odd friendships that just are, and Green never loses sight of this. It's brilliantly devised, and equally well acted, something truly remarkable in a coming-of-age story. So even if Green doesn't bring his full authorial sensibility to Pineapple Express, his skill at wresting great performances out of children augurs well for his ability to make a movie with Seth Rogen, James Franco, and a writer-producer whose favorite topic is adult male immaturity.

George Washington is available on DVD. Pineapple Express opens today.

Post contributed by Eitan Kensky.