THIS IS THE END (2013)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
If "This is the End" had been released in the 1980's, I would have thought "Geez, Dude, this is like totally rad!" Actually, no, I did not use that kind of language in the 80's but I would have been impressed by it. Nowadays, in light of superior, over-the-top supernatural concepts with no boundaries like the "Bill and Ted" films or Kevin Smith's own "Dogma," nothing here will seem new. "This is the End" is fitfully enjoyable and frenetic and zany but, like rheumatic fever, you also want it to end.
The cast of TV's cancelled "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" and various other Judd Apatow productions are all here, playing alternate versions of themselves. James Franco has a bitchin' party at his house where Rihanna doesn't like getting her butt smacked, and Michael Cera is a coke-sniffing douchebag who gets oral pleasure and likes to smack Rihanna's butt. The thinnest plot this side of James Franco's bearded follicles has Jay Baruchel picked up at an L.A. airport by Seth Rogen - both friends have been on the outs for a while. Baruchel hates L.A. and James Franco, and senses Seth Rogen bought into the L.A. lifestyle by always partying and smoking copious amounts of pot. Baruchel only likes to play video games and has no interest in art and, in one of the most sidesplittingly funny scenes, Franco explains that art is everything, including Baruchel's birth into this world! Before long, a calamity strikes L.A.! Fires erupt in the Hollywood Hills, people are being beamed up into Heaven by some ethereal blue light, cars crash into buildings, the earth shakes, and winged demons sprout everywhere! It is the Rapture I tell yah and, as Jonah Hill exclaims, the actors will be saved first...and then Jay Baruchel!
The entire movie has the survivors, including Franco, Rogen, Baruchel, Craig Robinson and Jonah Hill, holed up in Franco's house, trying to get by on bottled water, booze and a Milky Way bar! Meanwhile, Danny McBride eats almost all the food, blissfully unaware of the fiery apocalypse! If you can stand all these guys cursing, discussing a sexual run-in with Emma Watson, and referencing their own movies and comparing their sexual prowess by imagining jerkin' their own chains to a Playboy magazine, then "This is the End" is the movie for you. Sometimes, the movie drags a little, even at 1 hour and forty minutes, and some of it will ring familiar memories of Kevin Smith's own oeuvre. Only Smith knew when to take a time out and pause for some reflection. "This is the End" has no limits and throws away nuance and comic timing for the sake of some nifty special-effects and an endless barrage of insults, screaming matches and cliched movie parodies (an Exorcist parody is merely tired). Not that I object to foul language and rampant raunchiness, and it is fun watching these actors whom I do admire playing alternate versions of themselves (Baruchel and Rogen at least provide an emotional center), but after a while I just wanted them to quit.
