DVDs of the week, Jan. 6
Rocky Mountain News
Published January 5, 2009 at 6 p.m.
Pineapple Express
Rated: R, 111 minutes, $28.96, Sony Pictures
Grade: C+
Pineapple Express tries to breathe new life into producer Judd Apatow's familiar comedic formula - two buddies getting into trouble and bumbling their way into a stronger friendship - by turning it into an action movie. But it works neither as comedy nor action flick, says Associated Press critic Christy Lemire.
Seth Rogen plays an uptight pothead and James Franco is his laid-back dealer who get tangled up with a bad cop and a homicidal drug lord. As the movie slips into a mess of fistfights, shootouts and explosions, Lemire says, it gets away from its best aspect: two goofy guys getting to know each other.
Righteous Kill
Rated: R, 100 minutes, $29.97, Anchor Bay-ITN
Grade: D+
You might expect heavyweights Robert De Niro and Al Pacino to light up the screen as a pair of geriatric cops on the trail of a serial killer in Righteous Kill, but Lemire calls it "thoroughly mediocre," like "a long episode of Law & Order."
The plot meanders as the dead bodies and heavy-handed metaphors pile up, though the movie does capture the daily rhythms of New York along the way to a bombastic confrontational climax between the stars, Lemire says.
ALSO IN STORES TODAY:
* Babylon A.D.: A post-apocalyptic mercenary muscles his way from Eastern Europe to New York escorting a young woman who attracts a surprising amount of mayhem.
* Bangkok Dangerous: A gun-for-hire makes three of his assigned hits in the Bangkok underworld before running into unexpected problems with the fourth.
COMING NEXT WEEK:
* Swing Vote
* The Family That Preys
* My Best Friend's Girl
* Mirrors
* Appaloosa
* Brideshead Revisited
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