THIS IS THE END (COMEDY / DISASTER END OF THE WORLD FLICK / SPOOF) ****1/2 out of *****
(If the Apocalypse is really this funny, then bring on The End!)
CAST: Seth Gordon, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, Emma Watson, Rihanna, Michael Cera.
DIRECTOR: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen.
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and some damn good arguments for embracing the End Of The World - straight ahead....
IT'S LIKE THIS: Ah, the "The Disaster Movie" sub-genre... What would 1970's and early-1980's Hollywood Cinema have been without it?
Infinitely less cheesy, that's what. Think of flicks like AIRPORT, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, EARTHQUAKE, AVALANCHE, RETURN TO THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, WHEN TIME RAN OUT, METEOR, PLAGUE, THE SWARM, HURRICANE, VIRUS, etc... Even the best of the lot (THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, THE TOWERING INFERNO) have a fairly high Velveeta factor.
Then, in the mid-80's, "The Disaster Movie" went into sharp decline - probably because audiences worldwide were starting to keel over from cinematic-Cheeze-Whiz poisoning. If Hollywood would have kept the sub-genre going, it might have meant the end of humanity as we know it. Forget the Cuban Missile Crisis - we were almost done in by The Disaster Movie sub-genre.
Unfortunately, just when we thought we were safe, The Disaster Movie Sub-Genre woke up from its slumber in the early-90's: we had to contend with back-to-back killer volcano movies: DANTE'S PEAK and, um, VOLCANO. This was soon followed by TWISTER, DAYLIGHT, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, and POSEIDON (a remake of the GrandDaddy Of All Disaster Flicks: THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE) in the late-90's and early/mid-2000s... and before you could say "Holy Tsunami, Batman!" we were smack dab in the middle of a Disaster Movie revival.
But it got worse. Infinitely worse. You see, one night, the Disaster Movie Sub-Genre got really drunk at a bar, and noticed something across the room making major googley eyes at it: The End Of The World Horror Movie Sub-Genre, drunk of its ass, too. Examples of this category of flick includes THE SEVENTH SIGN, PRINCE OF DARKNESS, THE MEDUSA TOUCH, END OF DAYS, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, and PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE. Okay, alright, that last one just looked and felt like an End Of The World Horror Movie. Horrifying.
Fueled by lots and lots of Tequila and Jell-O Shots, the Disaster Movie Sub-Genre and the End Of The World Horror Movie Sub-Genre hooked up, had unprotected sex, and felt seriously guilty (and hung over) the next morning. But if they thought the only punishment from their indiscretion they would suffer was a heinous hangover (and maybe some highly ill-advised pictures snapped on their phones - ahem), then they were kidding themselves (or just still drunk off their gourd).
Nope. The real output of the Disaster Movie Sub-Genre and the End Of The World Horror Movie Sub-Genre was an illegitimate bastard child called... The Disaster That Kicks Off The End Of The World Horror Movie Sub-Genre. Basically, this sleazy union produced movies within the last few years that take the cheesy elements of both subgenres - and multiply the Velveeta factor by at least a dozen. THE DARKEST HOUR, SKYLINE, KNOWING, LEGION, and 2012 - just to name a few.
Pretty soon, the Disaster That Kicks Off The End Of The World Horror Movie started to feel about as fresh as a bag of Doritos left open for a week in a soccer field in the middle of summer. With these movie significantly losing their "crunch" it was only a matter time before someone would decide to go all post-modern or meta or deconstructionist or self-aware or whatever the hell SCREAM did to the Horror Movie Genre. Which brings me to our latest review: THIS IS THE END.
If you were to take the nutjobs, weirdos, sociopaths, and loons of 30 ROCK, IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, and SOUTH PARK (my TOP 3 Favorite TV Shows, by the way), and projected their personalities into the assholes of your basic ENTOURAGE (my least favorite TV show, by the way) episode - and then blended it with the elements of the Disaster That Kicks Off The End Of The World Horror Movie Sub-Genre, you would basically get THIS IS THE END. Essentially a loony send-up/satire of Disaster Flicks and End Of The World Flicks.
But it doesn't stop there. THIS IS THE END also goes the "meta" route - and turns itself into a quasi-reality show. You see, the "characters" in this flick have the same exact name as the "actors" who are "playing" them. Smart move, considering that we've already seen a send-up/satire of Disaster Flicks and End Of The World Flicks in, um, DISASTER MOVIE. In order to one up that flick, THIS IS THE END needed to do something different. Which means you basically end up watching Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, and Jonah Hill essentially riff on their personas for a couple of hours - while weathering the oncoming apocalypse.
It all starts when James Franco (James Franco) decides to throw a house party in the ridiculously stylish, absurdly symmetrical house he helped design (there's the first clue). He invites what looks like all of Young (or Young-ish) Hollywood: Seth Rogen (Seth Rogen), Jay Baruchel (Jay Baruchel), Jonah Hill (Jonah Hill), Danny McBride (Danny McBride), Craig Robinson (Craig Robinson), Rihanna (Rihanna), Michael Cera (Michael Cera), Emma Watson (Emma Watson), Aziz (Aziz), and so on and so forth.
For awhile, the party seems like your basic DoucheFest, with everyone basically trying to prove who is more successful and who can do more lines of blow - and generally giving the impression that maybe making it in Hollywood isn't what it's cracked up to be. However, just when you think you can't take anymore of these sub-ENTOURAGE bullshit shenanigans, something finally happens that picks up the pace considerably: The Rapture.
Now, for the folks who don't know what The Rapture is, according to the Bible, it is the term for, um, that fateful day when Heaven will shoot down some laser beams to save the virtuous and sin-free by beaming them up like Kirk, Spock, Uhura, etc. - leaving the sinful whores like me down on Earth to face down Armageddon. In short, The Rapture is The End Of The World As We Know It. Hmmmm: all the righteous, hypocritical, gossiping, judgmental, jealous, fun-challenged, no-life dipshits will check out and leave us fun-loving, life-of-the-party "sinners" behind to watch the fireworks? Where do I sign up? This is supposed to be scary? Please. Bring it.
Anyhow, this being Los Angeles, it goes without saying that almost everyone gets left behind on the ground when The Rapture hits. What with the City of Angels being the most inappropriately-named burg in the Universe and all. Seriously, I bet there were barely 50 souls that got beamed up to the Great Soccer Stadium In The Sky. Jesus must have turned to God and was all like: "Told you. And San Francisco is going to be even worse, Pops..." To which God probably replied, "Let's just call it a day and give all of Cali to Lucifer, son. What's on Comedy Central?"
But I digress. So when the dust clears (this time), virtually everyone is still at James Franco's party, what with them all being a bunch of sinful, hedonistic Californians. Basically, these dumbasses are completely oblivious to the mayhem unfolding right outside Franco's palatial fuckpad. However, they don't stay that way for long. Before you know it, a giant hole in the Earth opens up right on Franco's front lawn - and Michael Cera, Aziz, Rihanna, and whole bunch of other overpaid, under-talented nitwits are thankfully swallowed by its ravenous maw.
Horrified, Franco, Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson beat a hasty retreat back into Franco's palatial fuckpad. Inside, the five jackasses hunker down and wrestle with the notion that the world, in fact, is coming to an End all around them. Or at least, to a really fucked-up intermission. Pooling their meager resources, they discover the following things: (1) they don't have much food or water left; (2) they are all a bunch of douchebags; and (3) they are stuck with each other for the duration of this fiasco. You'd think there this is no way things could get possibly worse, right?
Oh, how wrong you'd be. Two things happen to put that silly little Polyanna notion firmly to rest. First, our five jackasses discover that there is actually a sixth jackass passed out in a bathroom upstairs, who has been completely unaware of the sudden arrival of the Apocalypse: Danny McBride (Danny McBride). Or, rather, our five jackasses discover Danny after: (1) Danny wakes up, (2) trudges downstairs, (3) unknowingly wipes out their entire stash of food by cooking a huge breakfast for everyone (surely their last), and (4) parks his husky ass right there in Franco's kitchen and basically insults each and every last one of them.
And the second awful thing that happens: Emma Watson shows up again. Yes. It's a disturbing as it sounds.
So... will any of our jackasses survive The End? If so, who? Franco? Rogen? Baruchel? Hill? Robinson? McBride? Hermione? What brought on the End Of The World, anyway? How can it be stopped? Can anyone be saved? What lessons about friendship and sacrifice do our jackasses need to learn in order for them to spared The Rapture? What do they have to do to get "beamed up" into the Great Soccer Stadium In The Sky? And the most important questions of all: Is Jonah Hill really such a duplicitous little bitch? Is Danny McBride really that great of a cook? Is Jay Baruchel really that adorable? Does James Franco really like to (as Danny says) visit the, um, other side of the street?
Here's my address, James... Call me when you are a block away...
BUT, SERIOUSLY: In several past reviews, I have elected to not provide too much of a serious discussion of the plot, for fear of spoiling the journey of discovery. We've talked about how some movies are better discovered on one's own, to maximize the pleasure of the movie-going experience. One such film is THIS IS THE END.
With its offbeat blend of the Disaster, End Of The World, Horror, and Comedy genres, as well as its surprising strategy of having its talented castmembers play themselves (or versions of themselves), THIS IS THE END is very much a unique film. It is also one of the funniest films I have seen in a very, very long time. The writer/director team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg do an accomplished job of keeping things consistently hilarious, clever, and engaging. Rogen also leads a stellar cast of comedians including James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, and Danny McBride - and their riffs on themselves and each other are the stuff that comic gold is made of.
Rihanna, Michael Cera, Aziz, and Emma Watson also plays themselves in funny cameos. However, make no mistake: THIS IS THE END belongs to its six leading men. The film is not meant to be taken seriously, but it still needed a certain gravity and intensity for the laughs to work. Fortunately, Rogen, Franco, Hill, Baruchel, Robinson, and McBride bring the right cocktail of skills to the table. The result is a comedy like no other - and easily on a par with PACIFIC RIM as the most enjoyable movie of Summer 2013 (thus far).
And the rest is for you to discover. If you don't have tears of laughter from this movie, your tear ducts may not be working properly.
