Review: This Is the End Ends the World with a Bang, and a Bunch of Stoners
By Tom Carson
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How much you enjoy _This Is the End _will definitely depend on your tolerance for Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, James Franco and the rest of the very in-clubby cast of this goof on doomsday movies—directed, to use the term so loosely it's darn near meaningless, by Rogen along with his longtime writing partner, Evan Goldberg. Since I like 'em all better under adult supervision—and yes, Judd Apatow counts—I may as well confess that the long stretches of aimless dicking around got me grumpy. If you think TITE is a sendup of these guys' celebrity, the ostensibly self-deprecating jokes Obama makes at the White House Correspondents' Dinner must knock your socks off.
Then again, even a persnickety type like me had better acknowledge that audiences' mileage will vary. Among other things, weed was never my drug of choice, practically a disqualifier all by itself when it comes to judging this crew's appeal. Not that I'd ever say I miss cocaine, of course—but there are days when I think the movies it fueled were better. Anyhow, if you end up giggling yourself silly all through _This Is the End, _remember I warned you that this is one case when I'm not claiming to be a reliable guide to whether your $8-plus-nachos is worth it.
As a piece of moviemaking, it's unquestionably crummy. (Funnily enough, the special effects toward the end are the most technically competent part.) A man who owes his career to his ability to retard—not advance—the plot, Rogen doesn't know how to build a situation or link scenes to ratchet up the ante. It may say something about his and Goldberg's naivete that they probably thought they were making their chore easier by confining most of the action to a single set, since any pro could have told them that few things are harder than sustaining viewer interest when everybody's trapped for the duration inside one house.
The house in question belongs to Franco—or "James Franco," anyway. (Nobody plays a fictional character; they're all tongue-in-cheek versions of themselves.) Baruchel hooks up with Seth on a visit to L.A., feeling moody because Rogen seems to like Jonah Hill better these days. Then they head over to Franco's for a party attended by, among others, Michael Cera and Emma Watson. All of a sudden, it's the end of the world: party guests swallowed by a giant suck-hole, and so on. And boom, our boys have to test their mettle as survivalists who don't even know what they're survival-ing.
Going by Rogen's interviews, I gather that even divulging the nature of the apocalypse in question may qualify as a spoiler. But it's kind of tattletale that his take isn't satiric. He endorses a theological Judgment Day just for the gags' sake, and the idea of making fun of it doesn't cross his mind. Given the concept's potential for burlesquing all sorts of modern fears and sacred cows—the stuff that Mel Brooks would have gone to town on if he'd thought up This Is the End—don't blame me for wishing Rogen's version of bending over to kiss his planet goodbye was less feckless.
Because these people did get famous for a reason, it's not like the thing is unwatchable. Neither Franco nor Rogen bring much except self-indulgence to the party, but Jonah Hill is good—and what happens to him toward the end is a scream, even if the movies he's sending up are, respectively, 40 and 45 years old. Even though it rips off Neil Patrick Harris's much wittier self-sendup in the _Harold and Kumar _franchise, Michael Cera's bit is fairly funny. Emma Watson, on the other hand, is mostly wasted, since it's all too obvious the guys can't wait for her to exit so they can go back to in-jokes.
Overall, though, anyone who's not totally smitten with This Is The End will be grateful for Danny McBride. He's doing a real comedy performance, not just a riff, and his appearances are as close as the movie comes to a character arc. When you see the movie, you'll understand what it means that I was rooting for McBride to triumph in the finale.
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