Pineapple Express, starring Seth Rogan, James Franco, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez, Danny McBride and Kevin Corrigan. Directed by David Gordon Green.

2008… the year of the superhero movie… the year of the cinema archeologist… the year of the stoner comedy. We kicked things off with Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay and as we near the end, we get Pineapple Express.

Seth Rogan wrote and stars in this comedy about Dale Denton, a slacker who works as a process server, disguising himself so he can serve legal documents on unsuspecting scumbags. Mostly he does it because it’s a job that lets him drive around all day, smoke pot and call into talk radio shows. He’s also dating a high school chick. James Franco plays Saul, Dale’s dealer and pretty much the closest thing Dale has to a friend. When Dale witnesses a murder, Saul’s the one he runs to. Unfortunately, the crime was committed by the guy that supplies all of Saul’s weed, and he quickly determines that the doobie Dale dropped when fleeing was his very special variety… Pineapple Express.

Much like Harold and Kumar, Dale and Saul spend the bulk of the movie on the run, tripping their way from one adventure to the next. Unlike a H&K movie, while this is very funny stuff, it’s not tongue in cheek humor. There’s no NPH on a unicorn. There are no hot naked chicks throwing themselves at Saul and Dale. What there is is an ever-increasing body count as the duo find themselves caught in the middle of a drug war. Very few people walk away at the end of this movie. Some of the movie is tripped out stoner humor and some of it is gallows humor, and most of it derives from the drug lord thinking Dale is something he isn’t.

This movie reminded me a lot of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It lacks that movie’s slick visuals, fast edits and snappy dialogue, but more than makes up for it by providing a good, old fashioned all-American buddy movie. If there’s anything negative I could say about this film, it’s that the whole plotline involving Dale and his girlfriend and her family never really went anywhere for me. The parents just vanish from the movie after providing a brief threat and the girlfriend doesn’t really do much either. Maybe if she’d been dragged along on the pair’s adventures, it would have worked, especially since she could have been the brains of their little gang due to Dale and Saul being half-baked much of the movie. But really, it’s a small complaint in a movie which otherwise had me laughing out loud as much as I have at a movie in a long, long time. This one is sure to be a cult favorite and a critical success.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brenden Fraiser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, Luke Ford, Michelle Yeoh and Isabella Leong. Directed by Rob Cohen.

Summer of 2008 looked promising for cinemagraphic archeology with the earlier return of Indiana Jones and this outting of Rick O’Connell as the Mummy franchise rolls on. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull fell about mid way in the scale of good vs bad Indiana Jones films. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor falls even further, being the weakest film in it’s franchise. That said, it’s not a horrible movie, just the weakest of the three. Think of it as this franchise’s Temple of Doom.

It is the late 1940’s. World War II is over, and after having spent the war spying around the world for Britian’s Office of Strategic Services, Rick and Evie O’Connell have settled down to retire. Their son Alex, who we last saw as a child in The Mummy Returns has secretly left college and travelled to China with his archeology professor in search of the tomb of The Dragon Emperor, played martial arts superstar Jet Li. The elder O’Connells are pulled out of a retirement of trout fishing and romance novel writing on one last mission for the OSS, to deliver a mysterious crystal egg-shaped artifact back to the Museum of Shanghai. As they travel to China, Alex discovers the emperor’s tomb, replete with a huge terra cotta army of ancient soldiers. As things in the Mummy movies tend to do, things go awry and the ancient Emperor is awakened and the race is on for the O’Connells to try to keep him from achiving immortality and gaining the power to raise his army in long-lost Shangri La.

The saving grace in this movie are the performances of Michelle Yeoh and Isabella Leong, who as the mother and daughter guardians of Shangri La and the emperor’s tomb respectively, manage to provide the best acting in the movie. Brenden Fraiser seems to be phoning in his performance as Rick O’Shea O’Connell (say it out loud once). Luke Ford (no relation to Harrison) does a decent job as Alex, but his on-screen parents don’t give him much to work with. Maria Bello, replacing Rachel Weisz as Evie, is just plain bad. There’s no chemistry between her Evie and Rick, or her and her brother Jonathan. If Rachel had come back, perhaps this movie would have been on par with the earlier Mummy films, but with this version of Evie, much of the fun is gone. It’s only as the finale spins up that she even appears to be comfortable in the role.

All in all, this movie will probably make it’s money on the DVD market, and it would have made a terrific direct to DVD sequel. It’s not theater worthy though. Go see Hellboy II if you want a good popcorn action flick this summer that features great banter between the characters and a save-the-world plot and save the O’Connells for a cold night this winter at home. Where it should have been released in the first place.

Stepbrothers, starring Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins. Directed by Adam McKay.

Will Ferrall is alot like Adam Sandler in my book. There are a lot of people who love nearly every movie the guy makes and about an equal number of people who think he makes the most inane, stupid and utterly bad movies of any current actor. I fall pretty firmly in the later camp, but after my surprise enjoyment of Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan earlier this year and my wife deciding to see Stepbrothers whether I went or not, I figured I’d give it a shot.

As an actor, Will Ferrall has made a career of playing roles that are essentially a 40 year old man acting like a spoiled 12 year old. In that respect, he is certainly within his element in this film. Ferrall and Reilly play the adult sons of two indulgent older single parents. These parents have let their sons live at home, well into their 40’s, and neither has pushed them to really try to be self-sufficient. When their parents meet at a medical conference and quickly marry, these childish, self-centered man-children are forced to live together. As soon as the families move in together, it becomes obvious the days of letting their children continue to be slackers are over and the parents set about trying to force the duo to grow up and move out.

Much of the rest of the movie involves Ferrall and Reilly acting like spoiled brats as they try to one up each other, eventually becoming best friends and trying to go into business for themselves, ultimately forcing their parents apart. Will they ever grow up? Will they stay friends? Will they succeed in getting their parents back together? Does the plot even matter in a Will Farrell movie, or are they just showcases for gross out humor and physical comedy?

I came away from Stepbrothers not hating the movie, which surprised me. I didn’t enjoy it, which doesn’t surprise me. If anything I only felt that my time and money could have been better spent doing something else. I’d say fans of Farrell will probably find the movie to be typical of this others, enjoyable but probably not his best work. People who aren’t fans may or may not hate it, but either way will likely think of it as a huge waste of their time.

The Dark Knight is a very good movie, and probably the best Batman film yet. That said, it’s got three glaring problems:

The first problem is the hype. A lot has been said in the press about Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker, including talk of him picking up a posthumous Oscar for the role. Ledger’s Joker is EVIL. Walking, talking evil. He makes all previous incarnations look, if you’ll pardon the pun, like clowns. That said, I never felt blown away by his performance. It’s good. It’s believable. It is not so good it can live up to the buzz that’s been built about it.

The second problem is that this isn’t the Gotham city of the Batman Begins. The comic book feel of the city is gone, and it has been replaced with a city that looks and feels real. The reason this is a problem is that it makes the comic book nature of Batman look out of place. This is film which plays like a serious action movie, which doesn’t work great when the hero wears a cape. Imagine Die Hard if John McClane had worn Spandex. It is not so distracting, or so out of place, as to really hurt the movie. But at the same time, by trying to go for a more realistic Gotham, it gives the film a tone that is something other than darker.

The last problem is that Bale’s Batman has taken to talking with a growl. Much like it’s silly to think half of a mask is a great disguise for Bruce Wayne, it is a bit odd that talking with growl is going to disguise his voice. Maybe I’m quibbling about this one, but it is clearly meant to convey how angry Batman has become in this film, but I found it distracting.

That’s it. The rest of this film is great. Ledger nails his performace as The Joker. He’s intelligent, but utterly insane and amoral. This Joker knows that killing lots of people isn’t what drives society, or individuals, to madness. You only have to kill one certain one.

This brings us to the movie’s other scene stealing actor. Aaron Eckhart is great as district attorney Harvey Dent. He becomes the hero Batman can’t be, yet it’s Batman who gives him the means to become the hero. It’s fitting, then, that it’s the Joker who makes him become a villian. Batman and The Joker. Good and evil. Order and chaos. Two sides of the same coin.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army picks up where the original Hellboy left off. Hellboy and Liz have patched things up, but it’s still a rocky relationship. Hellboy has also started going out of his way to get noticed by the public at large, tired of having to hide from them. This, needless to say, doesn’t go over well and he finds himself working for a new boss, a German ectoplasmic mist named Johann Krauss. There is a scene were Krauss and Hellboy get into a fight that is hysterical.

Long ago, man fought against the elves and goblins, winning horrific victories. The goblins then built an invincible army for the elves, an army of golden golems who were made to be unstoppable. The victories this army won were just as horrific. Unable to bear the violence anymore, the elf king and humans sign a truce. The army is hidden away, and to seal the truce, the crown used to control the army is split into 3 pieces, 2 for the elves and 1 for the humans. For thousands of years, the army waits and the truce is kept, with the elves and fairy creatures keeping to the forests… forests which humanity is rapidly destroying and expanding into. At last, the elf prince Nuada has had enough. Turning against his father and sister, he intends to wage a new war against the humans and claim the Golden Army as his own.

If you liked the first Hellboy, you are going to like Hellboy II. It’s clear that director Guillermo Del Toro was having a blast making this movie, and in writing it. The film is full of big set-piece battles and humorous moments that work best because they are so totally out of character. The scene were Hellboy and Abe get drunk is priceless.

It’s not a perfect movie. The Golden Army of the film’s title actually plays a very small role in the film. The villian, Prince Nuada, and his sister share a weakness which, once revealled, make the ending very predictable. While Abe and Liz both have more to do in this film than in the original, they are still very limited characters. Still, the summer of successful superhero movies rolls on and Hellboy II is worthy to sit among Iron Man and The Dark Knight. Very fun flick!