Pinax is a collection of Django-Apps that have already been glued together for you with some code and sample templates.
It's not plug&play, because Django is not a CMS and Apps are not plugins, but you can get your site going really fast. You just have to remove the stuff you don't need, add other Django Apps that you'd like to use from around the web and write the stuff that nobody has written before and that makes your site special.
I worked on a site with Pinax and had to remove quite a lot, to make it more simple, but it was still totally worth it.
It's a great example (probably the best) of how Django Apps are reusable and how to make them work together best.
Concrete example, here you go:
Pinax comes with all the "User" Part of an online community: login, registration, OpenID, E-Mail-Confirmation. That's an example of what you don't have to write.