James Franco, left, and Seth Rogen are two pot-loving guys in Pineapple Express. Below, Robert De Niro, left and Al Pacino team up as cops looking for a murderer Righteous Kill.

Columbia Pictures / Darren Michaels

The Pineapple Express (Sony, $28.96 single disk; $34.95 double disk; $39.95 Blu-ray double disk) combines a couple of movie-staple plots — a guys-on-the-run-from- killers comedy with the kind of druggie humor popularized on film by Cheech and Chong three decades ago.

Judging from the $100 million the film pulled in at the box office, Seth Rogen and James Franco, who play the pot-loving guys on the run, and producer Judd Apatow, who combines his low-ball humor with a marijuana smoke haze, found a gold mine.

There are wacky car chases, goofy run-ins with the law and with the killers, as well as a perpetual air of silliness which sometimes seems forced. Unless you are watching the film through a smoky haze yourself, you might wonder whether it’s really funny to see Franco, as a drug dealer who loves his own product, putting himself in danger for the 10th time because the lure of the weed is stronger than the run-for-your life urge. (Franco earned a Golden Globe nomination for his believably endearing portrayal of Saul, the drug dealer.) Or whether it’s really funny seeing a seemingly endless fight in which people are punched in the mouth, banged on the head, shot in the stomach and run over by a car.

True to Apatow’s code, there’s lots of potty-mouthed humor, a smirking view of sex, pandering to an audience that was born after Cheech and Chong made pot a comedy staple. Some of The Pineapple Express is quite funny, but it runs too long and often winds up groveling for laughs.

Anyone who relates to the stoner protagonists in The Pineapple Express, however, may have a hard time making it through all the material on the two-disc DVD. Like virtually every installment in the canon of Apatow-produced comedies, it comes to DVD with an unrated extended version of the film, deleted scenes, alternate takes, several featurettes, raw footage from the set, an entertaining commentary track from cast and crew members, plus more. (The single disc contains a fraction of those extras.)

On the extras front, you can’t go wrong by devoting some time to the raw footage (don’t miss Rogen and Danny McBride’s extended riff on Buddhism), some of the extended scenes, and the reliably enjoyable commentary track featuring Apatow, Franco, Rogen, Rosie Perez and many others. Feel free to skip the mostly laughless “Line-O-Rama” feature, the equally unfunny “Red and Jessica’s Guide to Marriage” and the extended version of the film, which adds a whopping, unnecessary 5 minutes 26 seconds to the proceedings. The notion of “more, more, more” may sell DVDs, although even that point is debatable. But when it comes to Pineapple Express, less is better.

Also this week

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up as cops looking for a murderer, but the fireworks aren’t as grand as one might have hoped for in Righteous Kill (Anchor Bay, $29.98); Vin Diesel tries to protect a girl who is the key to the fate of humanity in the futuristic Babylon A.D. (Fox, $29.98); Nicolas Cage plays a hit man who falls under the exotic influence of Thailand in Bangkok Dangerous (Lionsgate, $29.95); Kevin Kline puts on the big nose for the Broadway production of Cyrano de Bergerac (Image, $24.99); cataclysmic events unfold in the spoof Disaster Movie (Lionsgate, $29.95); the murders of three young girls sparks a manhunt in Rochester in The Alphabet Killer, Anchor Bay, $26.97); Navy SEALS get stranded inside guerrilla territory in Colombia in Behind Enemy Lines: Colombia (Fox, $26.98); Ben Kingsley plays a psychiatrist who exchanges his services for marijuana from a dealer in The Wackness (Sony, $28.96); German officers plan to assassinate the Führer in The Plot to Kill Hitler (Warner, $19.97); a Chinese gangsta-rapper wannabe goes for a table tennis championship in Ping Pong Playa (Image, $27.8); a group of vampires targets the residents of a small town in Kiss of the Vampire (MTI, $24.95); David Carradine plays a monk in 1920s China out for revenge along with Daryl Hannah as a nightclub singer at his side in Kung Fu Killer (Genius, $14.95).

From TV

Ready for another go-round on your home screen are: Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0 (Universal, $49.98); The Tudors: The Complete Second Season (Showtime/Paramount, $42.99); The Waltons: The Complete Eighth Season (Warner, $39.98); Tripping the Rift: The Complete Third Season (Anchor Bay, $29.97); Secret Diary of a Call Girl: Season One (Lionsgate, $29.98); Duckman: Season Three and Four Set (CBS/Paramount, $49.99); Mannix: The Second Season (CBS/Paramount, $54.99); Frisky Dingo: Season Two (Adult Swim, $19.97).

For children

Keep them glued to the tube with: Bob the Builder: Race to the Finish (HIT/Lionsgate, $14.98); Barney: Once Upon a Dino Tale (HIT/Lionsgate, $14.98); Elmo Loves You! (Genius, $14.93); Transformers Animated — Season Two (Hasbro/Paramount, $26.99); Ni Hao, Kai-lan: Celebrate with Kai-lan (Nick Jr./Paramount, $16.99).

Documentaries

Two women share very different memories of a Nazi concentration camp commandant — one a victim; one his daughter — in Inheritance (Docurama, $26.95); Olympic medalist snowboarder Shaun White is profiled in Don’t Look Down (ESPN/Genius, $24.95).

Collection

British director Michael Powell is honored by Sony with the two-disc set The Films of Michael Powell ($24.96). It has the films Age of Consent, starring James Mason as an aging artist who finds inspiration on a remote Australian island with a vivacious young woman (Helen Mirren in one of her first film roles), and A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven), starring David Niven as a World War II pilot who mysteriously survives baling out of his stricken bomber, falls in love with an American WAC (Kim Hunter) and then must plead for his life in a heavenly court. The latter film, originally released in a censored version in the United States as Stairway to Heaven, has been restored to its complete version for the first time on DVD.

With Journal Wire Reports

mjanuson@projo.com