In many ways the joke is on the audience, This is the End is not a real movie; it is just an excuse for a bunch of buddies to get together and get paid to throw a party. When your friends are James Franco, Seth Rogan, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson and Danny McBride that’s pretty much all you need. You don’t need a script, or a director, or a plot, the fun is just watching these guys interact having fun together.
Reviewing comedies is always a tough task, there are several types of comedies – the comedy that is not funny, but has heart (for me Wedding Crashers and There’s Something About Mary fall into this category), bad movies and even worse comedy – that forever reason I find offensive and just not funny (The Scary Movie Franchise, This is 40, Super Bad, basically any Judd Apatow movie – I can’t stand them) and or the last category – the really awful movie that delivers on the big gut busting laughs. It is rare that you have a comedy that works both as a comedy AND a movie.
There is almost no point in telling you the, ridiculously bad – over the top plot, of this movie. All you need to know is that now that Seth is a big Hollywood star his friend Jay is a bit jealous. He comes to LA to hang with his boy Seth, play some video games and smoke weed for a weekend. Instead Seth drags him over to James Franco’s housewarming party. The problem is Jay can’t stand Seth’s new friends especially the overly nice Jonah Hill. Franco also has some weird man love thing going on with Seth that’s not going over too well with Jay. All is hunky dory in Hollywood land until the end of the world hits.
While the idea that they are playing themselves is the film’s essential gimmick, it is a gimmick that largely works. The sublime brilliance of the script is that it plays on the audience’s perception of what we “assume” these people are like in real life. The cast just takes the vapid, “actor” and “archetypes” to the next level.
If you walk in cold then some of the cameos are surprisingly funny and one of them you wait the entire movie for and it does not disappoint. This particular cameo proves once again why I love this actor/actress – despite the crap they get, you have to admire them for not being afraid to look ridiculous. Then again this comment goes for the entire cast! Who knew Emma Watson could be hysterically funny?
The movie fails because all the post apocalyptic and rapture stuff was completely unnecessary and the poorly done spectacle of it all sometimes takes the focus away from these guys. I kept finding myself wishing the entire 2 hrs (too long for a comedy) of this movie was just about all of these weird, wacky people getting high at Franco’s place and riffing on the industry and their past movies.
I didn’t need to see the end of the world “horror” stuff, although what happens to Jonah Hill was hysterically funny and disturbing. I used to hate Jonah Hill. When he first came on the scene he was just the typical vulgar fat guy, but somewhere along the way he slimmed down and has become a really decent, likeable, actor. This is the End is indefensible, objectively, as a movie. However, all a comedy has to do is make you laugh and this one delivers gut busting laughs in spades from a bunch of people I normally don’t like and that is quite an accomplishment. This is the funniest comedy of 2013.
Final Grade A-