Given that I have seen a documentary about BDSM porn with explicit scenes, I am hard pressed to consider This Is the End the strangest film I’ve seen this year. However, it’s certainly the craziest thing to come out of a big studio in a while, with it’s million and one celeb cameos, raucous atmosphere, and wild twists and turns. To say that this film is funny would probably be an understatement, and yet the laughs don’t quite go as far as the running time of the jokes.
Taking a queue from the recent apocalypse craze, this film is basically an apocalypse comedy set in a hyper-realistic world where Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson play themselves in a film that sees the actors dealing with the end of the world as we know it. Stuck in James Franco’s house after the world goes to shit, the motley crew is faced with the existential crises of not having enough food or water, demons sneaking into the house and Danny McBride. But all is not lost as our group of friends finds out that there is a way to salvation and redemption, if only they can manage to survive outside in streets filled with cannibals, demons, and the ultimate judgement.
It’s always fun to watch celebrities skewering themselves and this movie provides no shortage of that. Of the main group, I laughed the most at Craig Robinson (who was wearing a Take Your Panties Off shirt the entire film) and James Franco, who I believe actually understands how foolish he is in real life and tweaks it just a bit for this movie. The highlight of the movie for many will be all the celeb cameos which range from the strange (David Krumholtz?) to the hilarious (Michael Cera as a coke head and Emma Watson). There are two especially fun ones that had me in absolute shambles, I’m talking crying for 5 minutes because I laughed so hard. For these alone it would have earned at least 2 1/2 stars from me and I won’t spoil them here.
The main problem with the movie is that the script just didn’t know how to ground itself despite the hyper-realistic stylings. In a comedy, things should seem seamless and here much of the dialogue, especially in the 2nd act and opening 10 minutes, felt really forced. I know there was a script but you could tell where certain scenes were improved and it just felt tonally different. This Is the End also has the problem of letting jokes run on too long or going a bit overboard. When the jokes are as crass as some of the ones in this movie, the longer the joke goes on, the less effective it is in my opinion.
Overall, this film is immensely enjoyable, if a bit flawed. You’ll certainly get your money’s worth of laughs from this flick.
Grade: ***/**** (B)