Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) is a process server. If you haven’t seen the Matthew Perry vehicle Serving Sara (hey, it has Bruce Campbell in it, how can I not watch it?) and are unfamiliar with what a process server does, basically they track people down and give them subpoenas to appear in court. Nobody likes process servers, which is one of the many reasons slacker Dale smokes pot all day. He buys his pot from his permanently fried dealer, Saul Silver (James Franco).
This movie really surprised me. From the trailers, I didn’t expect much. I’d completely forgotten that James Franco had ever been a comedy actor, too. Freaks and Geeks was almost 10 years ago, after all, but he’s still got that comic timing and he knows his way around an action scene. He’s undoubtedly the revelation of the movie, even though Craig Robinson’s gigantic, effeminate hitman steals every scene he’s involved in. Seth Rogen gives his usual performance as a slacker pothead, which seems to be the role he was born to play. Or at least the role he continues to write for himself, given his successful forays into screenwriting. It works for him and he continues to be appealing, though I think it’s about time he branch out from the roles that butter his bread before he becomes a younger Canadian Will Ferrell.
Director David Gordon Green, working from a script by Superbad team Rogen and Seth Goldberg, crafts a funny, skillful film that plays like a combination between the manic action of Hot Fuzz and Chandler-lite intrigue of The Big Lebowski. It fails to reach the lofty heights of those two movies (especially Lebowski) thanks to a little too much emphasis on getting stoned and meandering, but it definitely provides more than its fair share of laughs and some impressive action sequences (with impressive gore, no less).
In a summer that’s been fairly disappointing, it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised. When Step Brothers has been the notable dude comedy, it’s not hard to be one of the summer’s funnier highlights. At least until Tropic Thunder comes out, that is.
US correspondent Ron Hogan now has a craving for pineapples, just not the express kind. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness, and daily at Shaktronics.
