The name’s Duncan. The D. V. Detective who has gotten fed up with a clunky website no one visits anymore. I don’t blame them. Even I didn’t want to be reminded of owning a site that still uses frames. The web hosting service still charged me at 2006 rates in an era where social media costs nothing. So, recently, I did what any victim should to an abuser, I kicked that web hosting service to the curb and joined Facebook. Joining was the easy part, understanding how the damn thing worked was another story. The mantra: “Make sure my profile doesn’t mistake me for a child molester” kept beating in my head like a R. Kelly song. Yeah, I said it! It took me weeks to become confident enough to display my page as if I knew the difference between racking up page hits and adding friends. Right now, I got more hits than friends, barely. Only an I.T. major would equate a person clicking a button as a “friend.” Whatever the hell, I just hope it generates more business. Speaking of which, I gotta add my latest case into my database. It’s what I dubbed: The Case of the Misguided Target.

It started a week after I took down my dilapidated website. Anita Rojas called my cell, when it was working. She wanted me to refer her to other gumshoes who investigate movie plots. She was under the impression that my missing site meant I closed up shop, gave up, applied as a bag check at Wal-Mart… you get the picture. I asked her if this call was serious or was it my competitors’ way of announcing they’re open for business. She mentioned it was due to my lack of web presence. I assured her that the moment she stepped into my office, my business is as reliable as a bouncer’s eye on a guest list.

Anita did just that. She came to my office and calmly sat before me. She unraveled her reasons why she needed my assistance. She was up for a well sought after promotion in her ad agency. During a recent general meeting, one of her co-workers put her on the spot and suggested that Anita take on a failing account. Due to the nature of the meeting, and Anita’s highly competitive spirit, she accepted the challenge. It was after the meeting where she caught wind of how the colleague played her for taking on an account that was as dead as the VCR market. What flatlined the project had something to do with capturing the appeal to those who love movies like Pineapple Express. Oh, did I mention her co-worker was also up for the same promotion? Office politics. Evil spawned by the boredom trapped inside of a cubicle. Obviously, seeking help from her other colleagues was like letting the wolf guide Red Riding Hood through the forest. She needed solid research to help her make sense of a movie genre most people in her company ignored as much as couch potatoes avoid commercials.

That night, after watching Pineapple Express, I was set to write my report when the doorbell rang. A long legged neighbor asked to help her install her new 46-inch HDTV. Why me? Why was I lucky enough to be the only guy on my floor who had nothing to do on a Friday night? Well, I couldn’t leave the beautiful young lady in the lurch, could I? If that wasn’t the best chance to flex my technological muscles, then I don’t know what is. Anyway, when I returned to my digs, I went straight… Well, I stopped for a few moments to make sure what had just happened actually did happen. Then I went straight to the laptop, stared at the 13-inch screen and typed the following:

Dale: You see that? Saul: Those shadows in the bushes? Dale: No. That plotline about meeting my girl’s parents. It almost runied the movie.

Can a stoner movie be more than just a stoner movie? I’m sure that question has been asked since Cheech and Chong blazed their smoke filled trail more than 30 years ago. Pineapple Express is one of the latest attempts to clear moviegoers’ perceptions. What is that perception? A bunch of 20-something slackers, living in their dorm rooms or their parents’ basements with a bong in one hand and a remote control in another. Their meaning of ambition is to see which jokes have the lowest I.Q. Among all those stoner movies, Pineapple Express is definitely not one of them. Case in point, this stoner, Dale Denton (Seth Rogan) wore a suit… of all kinds in order to transform respectable office managers and doctors into defendants by serving them subpoenas. He did this eight hours a day, five days a week. But that’s not what impressed me the most. What shocked me was I couldn’t use “swiss cheese,” “tattered jeans” or “moth eaten shirts” to describe the movie’s plot. What also made the flick turn from good to damn good was how it bait-and-switched genres like retail merchandise.

The trailers, the color trailers, advertised the standard stoner flick to get the desired demographic in the theatres. Yet, the black and white Columbia logo and the old fashioned cars and outfits that introduced the movie had its audience wondering how much drugs did they need to convince themselves they were watching the right flick. Strange as it was, the scene established underlying focus of illegal marijuana. Not just using it or selling it, but the illegality of it. Why? The same reason city mobsters sold alcohol and country bumpkins brewed jugs filled of moonshine. It’s to gain unregulated and untaxed bathtub full of money. And how an innocent customer of said products could stumble in a brutal drug war.

Red: Look, guys. I’m sorry I snitched. I’ll make it up to you in the 3rd act. I promise!

But first, the flick had to give what the audience came for. There was a breezy, light touch in the way Dale was introduced. From disguise to disguise, he created a way to merge his juvenile sense of humor to counteract the drudgery of his line of work. In between his obligation to inflict inconvenience and fury like a traffic cop and the IRS, he drove around, laid back in his convertible, enjoying an activity that could’ve landed him in the same side of the law he was hired to put others. Add scenes where he visited Angie (Amber Heard), his high school girlfriend and a quick stop to his pot dealer, Saul Silver (James Franco), the quintessential stoner movie was off and running at the speed of a late night trip to the corner store.

And then… the contact high evaporated. Why did Dale turn around at the precise moment two cops sprayed a man’s blood almost as vividly as Hans executed Takagi in Die Hard? Weren’t we ready to see if Dale could mess up his borderline jail bait romance by fighting Angie’s male, age appropriate and compatible high school buddy? No? Thankfully, neither was this movie. The unexpected twist avoided the most stale confrontation done in modern cinema. The moment a certain black and white vehicle appeared behind Dale’s car, I groaned in that familiar way I always do when I’m forced to sit in the middle airplane seat. However, the movie gods finally had the sense to let the cop car roll past any delusions of mining comedy gold that was as bare as the job market.

What that ruthless execution did was heighten our ability to laugh at Dale, while cringing as he became the most annoying car alarm on the block. Suddenly, the passive, process server slipped into a scenario no amount of pot, not even the rarest of brands (Pineapple Express) could conjure up. In other words, this was where the real movie began.

Matheson: I can’t believe I’m a bad guy with a personality. Red: I can’t believe I can’t die. Budlofsky: I can’t believe the leat amount of lines.

Scared shitless, Dale sped back to Saul’s place. It was reminiscent of Pulp Fiction when Vinny’s frantic dash to the drug dealer who sold him the stash that caused Mia’s overdose. Once Dale and Saul realized Dale’s rare purchase could be easily tracked, they immediately go into hiding. Good move. If they had stayed they’d be dead, gunned down by two of Ted’s (Gary Cole) enforcers, Matheson (Craig Robinson) and Budlofsky (Kevin Corrigan). Who’s Ted? Head of one of the prominent marijuana operations and who happened to be part of the LAPD. It was he and his partner in crime, Carol (Rosie Perez) who unloaded their ammunition on an Asian guy, the same cops Dale witnessed. To cover up this incriminating evidence they needed to add two more on their homicidal body count. First, they had to figure out where they were. Enter the middleman called Red (Danny McBride). Unfortunately for him, his title meant more than passing illegal drugs from one source to another. His role was to snitch in exchange for his life. Soon after, fights and car chases dominated the screen. Although those scenes maintained a high level of danger, they were sprinkled some comedy to highlight the newest action buddy team to fight against… umm… to fight against… everybody who wanted them dead.

While survival can start friendships, it can also strain them. Dale and Saul’s nasty argument did what all of those seasoned, professional killers had failed to do. The argument had split the daring duo. The predictable plot point was so predictable, even the flick played up how ridiculous it was. As Saul sobbed away his loss, Dale shed tears (via phone) to Angie, admitting how much of a jerk he was… until she said the word “marriage,” a word men carry crucifixes in their pockets to escape its evil. Too bad Saul didn’t hear Matheson and Budlofsky utter that cursed word when they kidnapped him.

Dale came to his senses too late and made a desperate attempt to rescue Saul, with Red’s help. Yes, despite getting shot at close range, twice, he decided living was the better choice. He joined Dale in his half-baked plan to save someone he thought of only as his drug dealer. Once they reached Ted’s remote manufacturing complex, Red fled, leaving Dale to complete his suicide mission alone. But Dale soon discovered his Rambo imitation failed as miserably as a cell phone battery during phone sex.

Dale’s inevitable surrender led him to the person he barged in to save. After he and Saul rekindled their bromance they planned for their escape. What happened next was what you’d expect in a tricky climatic scene that included a gun battle between Ted’s gang and the rival Asian gang, who were amped up on avenging the death of the man Ted and Carol killed waaaaay back in the first act.

Red: Trust Me. holding these guns will definitely convince people we’re not slackers.

The complexity of Dale and Saul’s escape was so huge it needed outside reinforcement. It needed Red to man up and he did by ramming his car through the complex and into Matheson. Then he got shot again. This time Carol made sure he stayed dead. After all the countless rounds of bullets, stunt doubles and extras, it came down to two WWE style cage matches between Ted and Dale, and Carol and Saul. However, they didn’t expect the brother of the slain Asian man to blow up the facility. Not surprisingly, Dale and Saul survived and watched… Red crawl out to safety? Is he another one of Superman’s long, lost relatives or does he have six more lives to go? At the end, the modern day Three Musketeers or The Three Stooges rode off to the sunrise, with Saul’s grandma as their chauffeur.

What I liked the most about this flick was how it integrated scenes from iconic films while keeping its identity. When Saul climbed into the vent shaft like John McClane then later dove out of the way as the fire traveled up from the basement, were classic Die Hard references. These and the Pulp Fiction comparison I mentioned earlier weren’t done to spoof those movies; they were morphed into the reality Pineapple Express presented. Another small detail I enjoyed was when Saul prepared to “get in character” and switched to play rap music to solidify his rep as a “legit” drug dealer. It illustrated how movies and television shows stereotypically reinforce a dangerous, immoral vibe by portraying the notion that each and every rap record ever done in the last 30 years was synonymous with crime. I also appreciated how the bad guys, particularly Matheson and Budlofsky, weren’t cardboard cut-outs of countless hit men. They actually had character traits most audiences could relate to. The only gripe I had was not delving more into the Asian gang. The rivalry may have been explained a lot better, or at least turned the camera on the slain guy’s brother. And last and most appreciated was the absence of an elaborate explanation from any of the bad guys, and the absence of Dale and Saul’s great revelation of how they’d spontaneously pull out a brilliant plan of their ass at the last minute. The plot came down to this: Ted wanted to control his turf; the Asian gang wanted revenge; Dale and Saul wanted to stay alive. That’s it. No ultimate battle between good and evil. They were all evil in the eyes of the law. Dale and Saul’s asses would’ve been hauled to jail along with everyone else.

The main thing to remember about Pineapple Express is it has appeal outside of its primary demographic. Being a pothead need not be required. It crosses genres as seamlessly as Scotch and soda slides down an alcoholic’s throat. And the way its story was just as addicting.

After the necessary proofreading and spell checking, my incredibly detailed report was sent to Anita with a single click.

A few days later, and two days after she sent the remainder of my fee, I decided, what the hell and splurged some of my hard earned cabbage to eat some cabbage, in the form of lettuce, with drenched with French dressing. When I stuck a forkful in my mouth, an outburst almost choked the flavor out of my salad. I turned and saw four women sitting a few tables away; they were in the middle of a toast. Among them was Anita, sporting a smile wider than I had thought she could ever make. Once she spotted me, she gave me the thumbs up and a nod of a woman who nabbed a promotion.

Yet another satisfied customer. The case of the Misguided Target is closed. Thanks for reading, y’all. Stop by and check me out next time. I’m Devin V. Duncan, the D.V. Detective, logging off.