Dale [Seth Rogen] goes out to find Ted Jones [Gary Cole] to serve him some legal documents – whilst high – and he witnesses a murder. In a panic he rushes to his dealer’s, Saul [James Franco], place to get some help and figure out what to do. They decide to go on the run from these top tier drug kingpins of the city.

This movie was really good, but at the same time I felt like it somewhat disappointed. I was trying so hard to love this movie, but every time I think about how there were too many times I was sitting there and just not getting to the gag. Now I’m not sure if it’s that the humour required you to have a PhD in marijuana smoking [I’m a non-smoker of any kind ever in my life]. I mean I still laughed while watching the movie, but I can remember too many moments – after the story picked up – when I was just sitting there being idle.

It must be said, that I love James Franco in this movie. He is hilarious from start to finish. I’m not a fan of Franco [Flyboys, Spider-man 3 and Anapolis], but he definitely lifts this film up on his shoulders and carries it around like Atlas. Seth Rogen feels less funny than he usually does in most of his movies. I’m not sure if it is that the “stoner” role is getting boring from him, or if it is him trying too hard to be a serious person in the scenario rather than someone who didn’t care – as he is in his other movies like 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad – it just didn’t work. Not to say he doesn’t have funny moments, but Franco vs. Rogen in this movie has Franco kicking Rogen in the balls repeatedly for the full runtime of this movie.

The action here is good and fun. I especially like during the sequence in the farm where they found the guns and we get some quick-cutting Edgar Wright style filming, which isn’t particularly funny but made me laugh anyway because it made me think of Hot Fuzz again. The chase scene with Franco having his foot through the covered windshield is hilarious, as well as the last fight scenes between the bad guys and Franco and Rogen.

I’m yet to see Snow Angels – or any other film by David Gordon Green – so I can’t really comment on how he compared as a director in this film, or how he adapted to the action comedy style for this film. However, I can say it was pretty well directed. Acting was decent, action scenes worked and with a couple of cool moments for homage and parody it was fun to watch.

Overall this movie is worth a rent. I still think Tropic Thunder wins on the comedic front, but this wins for sure when it comes to the action scenes. So maybe this should be made into a double feature so that you can get the best of both worlds in a 200 minute package. You can even use the fake trailers from Tropic Thunder as an intermission between viewings.

IMDB says 7.8/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 68%

I say 7.5/10