Pineapple Express is one of those movies that sticks around in people's minds thanks to the ridiculous premise which escalates faster than logic would allow. And maybe that's why it makes sense that someone like John Slattery would claim it as his guilty pleasure. "If it comes on… I will just sit there with my coat on and watch the whole thing," the actor told JustWatch.
WATCH: John Slattery Is A HUGE Fan of This Stoner Comedy!
Slattery went on to double down on his love for the 2008 stoner action comedy. "And I know it's not bad because it's just great," he added, while promoting the 2025 psychological thriller, Nuremberg. "Everything about it is so funny. It's just so well made. The performances are hilarious." He also mentioned watching it when his kid was little.
"We started watching it when my kid was little," Slattery continued. "And everything just stops, and you watch the rest of it." Linking Pineapple Express to a happy memory is usually where the origin story of a guilty pleasure begins. And once a movie gets attached to a specific feeling or era of your life, arguing about whether it's good stops mattering quite so much.
The Strange Balance That Makes 'Pineapple Express' Work
Trying to explain why Pineapple Express works is slightly tricky, mostly because the movie feels like it shouldn't hold together as well as it does. The setup is simple. Two stoner guys, Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) and Saul Silver (James Franco), witness something dangerous and spend the rest of the movie's runtime running, arguing, hiding, and accidentally making the whole situation a lot worse. But the tone does a lot more than the plot on paper suggests.
What people sometimes forget is how precise the comedy in Pineapple Express actually is. The timing, the pauses, the way conversations stretch a little too long and then snap back into chaos. None of that feels accidental, even though the movie wants you to believe it's loose and improvised. There's real construction underneath the mess, which might be why it stays funny on every rewatch instead of just coming across as loud background noise.
At the same time, it's easy to see why some viewers never connect with it. The violence is abrupt. The pacing wanders (even if it is on purpose). And certain jokes repeat until they almost wear out their welcome, and maybe occasionally do. It's the kind of film that asks you to meet it at a very specific wavelength, and if you're not there, the whole thing can feel super exhausting instead of hilarious. But when it clicks, it really clicks.
Why To Watch 'Pineapple Express' (And What To Watch After)
The real appeal of Pineapple Express (and stoner comedies in general) is the sense that time can stretch, conversations can drift, and nothing has to be resolved in a perfectly neat bow way to still feel meaningful. That type of story is harder to find than it used to be, maybe because so many modern comedies feel the need to prove something instead of just existing. But there's also a deeper message underneath the chaos of most stoner films.
These movies are usually about friendship, even when they pretend not to be. Their core message is about the people who stick around when things get inconvenient or weird or genuinely dangerous. Sure, it sounds dramatic when written out like that, but in the movie, it just feels natural. People who love this wavelength tend to rotate through the same small universe of comfort rewatches, with films like 2010's Get Him to the Greek or 2000's Dude, Where's My Car?
These stories lure you in for the vibe, which is a vague word, but also the only accurate one. And maybe that's why Slattery's confession feels so relatable. Because it's about admitting (often to ourselves) that sometimes the movies we return to are the ones that feel effortless but are actually so well-crafted that we sit down to watch them, even with our coats still on, and that is a pretty big deal.
