This Is the End - Funny as F**k

This Is the End – Movie Review

By Anne Brodie Jun 10, 2013, 21:27 GMT

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While attending a party at James Franco\'s house, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and many other celebrities are faced with the apocalypse. ...more
 

Fair warning that This Is the End is so funny, so lewd and crude that you will feel exhilarated exhausted and thoroughly entertained, and drained when it’s done.  You may need help to the car.
An hour and a half or so of rolling laughs is to be treasured due to rarity these days and lo and behold, here they are.  So few contemporary comedies dare to be this funny and outside the realm of the mainstream / safe.  This Is the End is just flat out effing hilarious.
Some of today’s hottest young comic actors, some hot ticket non-comedy names and stunt casting choices blend together to hold us helplessly hostage.  Situations you’d swear you’d never see in the movies happen, writ large.  It’s utterly shocking and utterly seductive and there’s even a plot.

Canadian Jay Baruchel arrives in Los Angeles to hang with fellow Canadian Seth Rogen.  Jay’s unhappy in LA and determined to stay that way.  Seth takes him to a house party at James Franco’s ultra-modern, earthquake proof place in Beverly Hills. Baruchel’s even more ticked at the conspicuous consumption and is frankly wary of Franco.
Rogen and Baruchel are trying to repair unspoken damage to their friendship, brought on, so Baruchel believes, by Rogen living in a phony gilt cage of success in LA.   He’s feeling morally and artistically superior.
Party guests include Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, Mindy Kahling,  Emma Watson, Rihanna (!) and sundry other famous people all of whom leave Jay cold.  
Danny McBride, Channing Tatum, Paul Rudd and the Backstreet Boys show up.  It feels as though we’re at the epicenter of young Hollywood as it winkingly invites us in to participate in the party, the last party on earth.
A downcast Baruchel convinces Rogen to come with him to the store to get cigarettes and take a break from all that oppression.  They talk about why the party sucks or doesn’t suck and the tension grows because it’s clearly not just the party that’s in trouble.  
They’re in a convenience store arguing and BOOM something happens and people begin to ascend towards the sky bathed in blue light.  The earth is shifting.
Their instinct is to run back to Franco’s earthquake proof house, but no one believes that people are out there ascending up to heaven.  But then chaos hits even Franco’s.  People run outside, much to Franco’s chagrin “but it’s safe here!” as a giant hole to hell appears in the front yard.  
Guests are being sucked into it, even Rihanna and David Krumholtz!   When it subsides, six are left inside Franco’s fort, fighting and facing the end of days.
Hysterical sequences spiced with knowledge that the world is ending and the devil is running loose are fresh and outrageous.  Resentment grows, fights over remaining food and water get ugly and the insults fly.   A jewel of a scene in which Franco and McBride fight over who would cover whom with more bodily fluids is insanely funny.
They figure out that those people ascending are heaven bound, and those in the hole are now in hell, so they start to ponder their own fate.   It actually turns religious.  It ends with an argument about the Holy Trinity which Franco describes as being like “Neapolitan ice cream. Three in one.”

And that’s all I can say.  The rest has to be experienced. Brilliance and genius, the Hellzapoppion’ of our age.  Just the best.
Visit the movie database for more information.
35mm fantasy
Opens June 12
Written by Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen, Jason Stone, based on the short "Jay and Seth vs. The Apocalypse"
Directed by Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen
Runtime: 107 minutes
MPAA: 18A
Country: USA
Language: English