MPAA Rating: R
Director: Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen
FilmPulse Score: 8/10
Seth Rogen & Company shed all pretenses and facades, opting to play caricatures of their respective film personalities and, really, it’s about time. Goldberg and Rogen could have given their characters fake names and distinctive personalities, but honestly, they would have ended up exactly as they are. Seth Rogen channels an amalgamation of all previous Seth Rogen roles, with James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, and Craig Robinson doing the same – all while trying to survive the end of the world.
The concept of these actors portraying themselves is quite beneficial because in doing so, it saves the viewer a substantial amount of time by not having to sit through character introductions or character development. You know who they are, you know their on-screen personalities and you know their individual brands of humor. So right there you cut about 40-50 minutes of superfluous “fat” out of the film because let’s face it – a comedy’s main objective is to make you laugh and This Is the End gets down to completing that objective rather quickly with hilarious small talk.
With that being said – short review: If you like James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride and/or Craig Robinson and their styles of humor – you should and probably will enjoy this comedy. If you don’t – then, you probably couldn’t care less that this exists.
This is the End centers around Jay and Seth attending James Franco’s house-warming party after smoking copious amounts of marijuana. Others are attending, such as Michael Cera playing the douchiest version of himself to great comedic effect (with Capri Sun in-hand), Jason Segal discussing the nuances of comedic brilliance that is How I Met Your Mother with Kevin Hart, Christopher Mintz-Plasse in cocaine-face, Emma Watson as well as Rihanna…for whatever reason.
Then…the Apocalypse occurs. Maybe? They aren’t quite sure at first, maybe it’s just a series of sinkholes. Maybe wildfires. Maybe the Lakers won, but Baruchel’s pretty confident that it’s the Apocalypse. Whatever it may be, it quickly dispatches the majority of the party-goers except for Franco, Hill, Rogen, Baruchel, McBride and Robinson. From this point out it’s just a matter of the six of them surviving.
A good amount of laughs are accumulated during the beginning stages of their survival. Craig Robinson struggling to move Franco’s giant penis sculpture; discussing their rations, one of which is a Milky Way bar that is in high demand; Johan Hill messing about with a revolver from the 2006 film, Flyboys and, of course, the matter of sleeping arrangements.
This is the End does, eventually, go into some surprising territory and, in doing so falls into the disappointing lull that most comedies fall into – they focus on moving the plot along and in the process forget about the comedy that the audience is there for in the first place. When This is the End starts to focus (too heavily) on CGI destruction and CGI monsters, all while forgetting the humor, the film does become a tad boring. However, there is more than enough comedy in their bickering and arguing along with numerous film references in the first two-thirds of the film that more than makes up for lack of laughs towards the end.
