"This Is the End" - Seth Rogen / Evan Goldberg, 2013

A film that completely exists in the present moment, relying on the audience's submersion in the cultural lexicon from which it pulls its material and personalities, This Is the End is, like most summer comedies, a piece of cinematic ephemera. This isn't a problem in itself, though it does make recommending the film heartily difficult. Besides this, there's also the excessive runtime for the content here and the grinding halt that the film comes to around the time that the apocalypse begins.

Jay's Arrival and The Party
Seth Rogen, playing himself as all the other actors in the film are, picks up his friend Jay Baruchel from the airport for the latter's vacation to Los Angeles. From the very first paparazzi hounding Rogen, the film is very forward about its strange but intriguing aesthetic. Typical Rogen fare ensues as Jay and Seth get blazed and play video games in the latter's LA home. As with most of this fare, testosterone essentially oozes out of the screen.

They attend a housewarming party for James Franco, and the obligatory host of cameos ensues. This portion is probably the comedic highlight of the film, featuring a lot of quickfire jabs and over-the-top caricatures (most notable are Michael Cera's coked out, excessively horny personality and Jonah Hill's vague pompousness about his Oscar nomination for Money Ball). When Jay leaves to pick up a pack of cigarettes, he witnesses the first steps of the Rapture, envisioned by Rogen and company as blue pulsing spotlights abducting customers from the gas station and other innocent individuals in the street. Hollywood apocalypse ensues, with raging flames, meteors, and general havoc. Upon returning to Franco's home, the two disagree about what happened as Seth tries to cover himself and disclaim the events as a fabrication from Jay. This illusion doesn't hold up long as the house guests all run outside to see the Earth open and swallow Michael Cera and a host of other characters with whom the writers didn't want to have to deal anymore. After some spectacle, the core characters find themselves sleeping in the fortress-like house - roll call is Seth, Jay, James, Jonah, and Craig Robinson. From here, the film takes the awkward turn of trying to inject a palatable, cohesive narrative. A few threads pop up: a) the disintegrating friendship of Jay and Seth; b) the pursuit of answers to the mystery of exactly what is occurring (Jay has it figured out around this point anyway, so this plotline in particular seems odd); and c) the survival of the remaining individuals in Franco's home. This is a big tonal shift with only the barest of seeds planted in this essential first act. The film suffers for the excessive amount of time four (and soon five) characters will have to play off of a limited palette of comedic interactions.

The Apocalypse Begins
As the apocalypse gets well under way, a few tropes from survival films come up. The company tries to make everything come off as self-aware, but the film is anything but. This Is the End revels in the cliches of survival horror, and it's hard to buy into the jokes that are trying to jab at the film itself when the writers are obviously very comfortable allowing audience expectations to lead them. A weird irony emerges: the sarcasm and irreverence of the group is so mainstay in Hollywood now, that all of the jokes meant to poke fun at drone-like survival horror audiences backfire as being just as predictable as the latest summer action flick. 

It's hard to find a charming scene here, but some got quite a few laughs in my showing: Danny McBride emerges as a stowaway of sorts, an individual not invited to the original party who passed out in the tub and cooks the remainder of the men's food on their first morning post-disaster. He exchanges some words with James over a porno magazine, and the extreme tempers on both ends devolve into a series of references to semen and explicit gestures. The highlight of this act is definitely the cabin fever-induced Pineapple Express 2 trailer, which shows that there is still amusement to be drawn from these actors' tried-and-true approach to comedy. The 2013 trope of "uncomfortable gun scene" (see also: Spring Breakers, where it was done excellently; and The Bling Ring, where it was probably the best scene in an otherwise lukewarm picture) is repeated here to pretty weak results besides the clearly desired extreme discomfort of a primarily American audience. Outside of the political context of such scenes, the visceral feeling of a gun waving around in what amounts to a slasher is effective, even if it does seem to be there just to further date the movie.

After a series of conflicts with a returning Emma Watson, increasingly visible demons, and each other, the group starts to splinter, segueing into the final portion of the film.

The Dissolution and Ascensions
Danny McBride is the first "voted off the island," with Jonah Hill's banishment coming soon after in the form of a pretty questionable demon rape scene. The over-the-top crassness might appeal to some, but seeing a fairly large penis go in and out of Hill against his will didn't do much besides disgust me.

The secret to getting to Heaven is discovered to be self-sacrifice when Craig Robinson protects the remaining three leads from a demon in a triumphant display. The spotlight shines on him, and he is whisked away, leading into a rapidfire trek through the last stretch of the film.

In short, the three remainders run into a newly cannibalistic Danny McBride, complete with Channing Tatum as a gimp. James Franco elects to be the next one to ascend, but cockiness gets him eaten by the cannibals to no cosmic reward. Jay and Seth have a final confrontation with Lucifer and manage to escape him while castrating him in the obligatory "friendship prevails" resolution to an already shoddy narrative arc concerning their relations. A party scene in Heaven occurs, and the Backstreet Boys perform because the trope of big dance numbers at the end of movies from outdated pop singers is definitely "in" right now.

Ultimately, I feel that This Is the End is an amalgam of everything risky that's happened in mainstream cinema over the past year. It's a nice capstone on some pretty good moves Hollywood made, but the fact that it is hyper-aware of how dated it already is, along with the fact that it clearly is still married to Hollywood tropes to move it along (weak character arcs, lazy pairings for 101-style development, etc.) make it a much weaker film than it could have been in more capable hands. If only this could be the end of hyper-referential postmodern comedies being handled by people who aren't smart enough to deliver.

★★