This Is the End is not Pineapple Express 2, though its April Fools ad campaign tricked many (including myself) into thinking it was. The spirit and cast are all there with a little Knocked Up, Superbad, and every cast member of the School of Apatow (and more) thrown in for good measure. Like Adam Sandler et al. in Grown Ups, This Is the End is ostensibly an excuse for Seth Rogen and his friends to hang out and shoot a movie about him and his friends hanging out. But rather than being 90 minutes of celebrity summer camp wish fulfillment, This Is the End opts to add comedy and an apocalypse to the mix. A comedocalypse, if you will.
The concept behind TItE is a simple one that most everyone has, at one point, considered: What if the book of Revelations actually happened? Co-writers/directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg take this concept to its logical and hilarious conclusion as if set in some slightly skewed, yet totally familiar, bizarro universe where all their friends go to a party at James Franco’s house.
The first act relishes in toying with the audience’s preconceived notions of these actors playing themselves. Jay Baruchel plays an anti-social hipster visiting Seth Rogen’s affable people-pleaser character in L.A. Not a huge stretch. Franco puffs up his pretentious, artsy side while Jonah Hill plays the effeminate suck-up and the one-note Danny McBride still kills as a toned-down Kenny Powers. Craig Robinson stays familiar as the tough guy with a soft underbelly but Michael Cera goes full-bore Charlie Sheen. Then Hermione, er, Emma Watson, shows up wielding an ax, seemingly playing it straight.
All the while, the end-of-times rain of fire and brimstone and demons-with-dicks ensuing outside, as everyone fights over a candy bar and a porno mag inside, keeps the film from reeling into glorified celebrity home-movie territory. Rogen and Goldberg say that their version of the apocalypse was taken almost directly from the Christian Bible, yet somehow This Is the End is the freshest and funniest take I’ve seen, amidst a slew of end-of-the-world movies and TV shows, since Shaun of the Dead.
