There is a scene towards the middle of Judd Apatow’s latest production, Pineapple Express, that, though too late in the film to say it sets the mood and tone, would work well as its emblem: the two stoner friends Dale (Seth Rogen) and Saul (James Franco) have just smoked a joint in the middle of the woods after a near escape from their pursuers. The lighting is honey yellow, the music is whimsical, silly even, the characters play leap frog and frolic around the trees; it is a scene that could’ve easily been taken from a romantic comedy, from a Wes Anderson film, or from a lyrical art house jaunt, but never from a gore-filled bong-a-thon actioneer. Except, of course, it is.

David Gordon Green’s Pineapple Express, is a hilarious genre conglomeration executed with such gusto and abandon that one would suspect a master of convention bending pyrotechnics at the helm (say, Tarantino?), not the subtle and poetic story teller who brought us George Washington and All the Real Girls.

Pineapple tells the story of Dale Denton, a fuzzy 28-year old process server dating a high school girl, and Saul Silver, a sweet faced pot dealer with a permanent squint in his eyes. During one of Dale’s visits, Saul sells him a bag of the eponymous Pineapple Express, a rare batch of green, musky-pungent enough to inspire the contemplation of what, if it indeed existed, god’s vagina would smell like. Or, to put it differently dear reader, it tastes so good that to smoke it feels wrong, wrong like only killing a unicorn could feel.

Dale continues his hazy day delivering subpoenas in a variety of costumes and during his last stop he witnesses a crooked cop Carol Brazier (Rosie Perez) and Ted Jones (Gary Cole), a drug lord and his next servee, cap an Asian man in the back of the head. Dale, still parked and still smoking, tosses his joint out the car window and two hit-and-runs later he is back in Saul’s apartment deducing that yes, Pineapple Express is so rare that if Brazier and Jones find it, they could easily trace it back to Saul…Jones grows the stuff, after all. Carnage and hilarity ensue.

At the heart of the film, and at the heart of the slew of Apatow films and productions, rests the same principle: these comedies find humor in human characters we as an audience are drawn to and recognize as parts of ourselves. They rely less on exploiting the 40-year old virgin’s vulnerability, and instead find humor in the character’s long journey to overcoming it.

In Pineapple, the humanity is found in the rather ambiguous relationship between Dale and Saul. Dale has a job, a girlfriend, and a goal (to become a talk radio show host), whereas Saul lives his days selling reefer to people he’d rather not have “linger” and supporting his grandmother in her pampered retirement community. Rogen’s Dale is loserish, plump, and insecure, especially after seeing the young classmates his girlfriend hangs around, but he finds it easy to feel superior to Saul, who is not a friend, but a drug dealer. Saul is eager to please, and the inherent loneliness of trafficking in a bizarre dynamic of intimacy (accomplices in crime) and anonymity (wouldn’t want to be seen with you in public) makes him receptive to the genuine good guy attitude Dale has.

Rogen has now made a career of playing versions of his persona in recent comedies. He does it exceedingly well and is thus far still entertaining. But Franco’s performance is a breath of fresh air after his stilted Harry Osborne portrayal in the Spiderman franchise and the slew of crappy militaristic vehicles he starred in (Flyboys, anyone?). He plays the pot dealer with a lazy, oafish, and disarming sexiness that makes it seem as if Franco’s more at home in comedies, a la Freaks and Geeks, than in moralistic tough guy actioneers, a la Annapolis. His Saul is where the ambiguity of the film really finds expression as his love for his best friend borders on the romantic (pay attention to the scene where both buddies are talking up in a tree; is that a tear in his eye?).

Man-crushes (Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd in Knocked Up) and ambiguous tendencies (Jonah Hill’s penis obsession in Superbad) are a staple in the Apatow repertoire, but there really hasn’t been an episode of, say, dry humping. Now yes, it’s for laughs, and the intent is not to get off but to cut through hand restraints, but in a movie with more than a few “I love you, man”s, one could argue that basking in the subtextual homoeroticism of traditional buddy-cop-action comedies is one of Pineapple Express’s ways of subverting genre and in turn re-energizing it for the masses.

As great as the chemistry is between the two leads, Pineapple hits a snag towards the third act where the action slows, then, inexplicably, moves entirely too fast. And there is also something to be said for the buckets of blood used in the film. It is at times gruesome in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre way, not in a Kill Bill kind of way, and can be a little too brutal in tone for the general good nature of the film. I mean we all like seeing cars crush hateful characters, but do they have to be flaming cars?

All this is superfluous, though. Pineapple Express hits its marks more often than not, whether it be the hilarious pot humor, the frantic action scenes, or the brotherly (or not) love between Dale and Saul. Genuinely entertaining, beautifully shot, it’s another feather in the cap of the Apatow cadre via the talented direction of one Mr. David Gordon Green.