The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 6, 2009. Both rated and unrated versions of the film are available. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray in Australia on December 31, 2008. Both the Blu-ray and 2-disc DVD versions of the film come with a digital copy of the unrated film. It was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on March 1, 2016.
Pineapple Express UNRATED
THE BLU-RAY DISCby Bill Chambers Another day, another overstuffed Blu-ray courtesy the Apatow camp. Presented in a lustrous, fine-grain 2.40:1, 1080p transfer, Pineapple Express looks fetching on the format in both its theatrical and 5-minute-longer unrated incarnations (although Pineapple Express was likewise shot in Super35, the image doesn't have that same flat, borderline solarized appearance that Step Brothers does in HiDef), and the feature's 5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio is equally dynamic. But the special features exhausted my patience, and long before they were over. (Granted, a package like this was never intended to be consumed all at once--that's my occupational cross to bear.) I started to chafe during the 32 minutes of "raw footage," the objective of which is...what, exactly? To marvel at the mad improv skillz of the cast? To engender sympathy for director David Gordon Green for having to sculpt Devil's Tower from mashed potatoes? Whatever the case, putting Béla Tarr-ready takes of James Franco reacting to "227" on this disc redefines self-indulgence. (It's probably infinitely more tolerable if you're high, which is probably the point.) Capping as they do a pretty thorough excavation of the trim bin--you also get three deleted scenes (the best an expunged cameo from Drillbit Taylor's Troy Gentile), a handful of alternate scenes, the by-now familiar "Line-o-Rama" (3 mins.), "Direct-o-Rama" (4 mins. and similar to Line-o-Rama, with the addition of offscreen cues from Green), a "Gag Reel" (5 mins.) that begins with Franco tickling Seth Rogen's nutsack and gradually morphs into a wrap-party goodtimes highlight reel, and a pair of outtakes from Rogen's "Phone Booth" rant (6 mins.) with a funny Judd Apatow filling for an as-yet-uncast Amber Heard--these dailies are an endurance test akin to carousel #2 of your neighbour's vacation slides. Maybe in 30 years, when we've got some distance from Apatow's overexposed process, or when Green has taken his place among the masters of his craft, they'll seem more revelatory and will have lost the taint of overkill, though even if we accept them as a gift to posterity the filmmakers still come off as narcissists for including them here. 2ff7e9595c
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