This is the End Review

*Promotional Poster for the motion picture This is the End*

This is the End will make you wish it ends very quickly. Safe for me to say that this movie was a major disappointment. Not that I had high expectations for it to begin with, I felt the sensation of a huge let down almost immediately after I watched the trailer, which was saddening at the least given it's extremely talented cast. It's taken me a while to get up the stomach to watch this film, knowing deep down inside that it wasn't going to be a worth while experiences, but I finally got around to it...and oh my.

*Warning: There will be spoilers ahead*

Now it's puzzling to me on just about every level how this film could manage to mock itself so much while being basically everything Hollywood could ever want it to be. The blatant jabs that the film takes towards the movie industry itself are nowhere's near as bad as the sacrifices it makes to keep the Apatow trope current. Case and Point: Emma Watson manages to have the biggest cameo in the film, which is odd, no? Considering her new movie 'The Bling Ring' came out just around the exact same time. Perhaps that's just coincidence, but consider the Backstreet Boys performance at the end; which could not seem to be a more shameless plug for the newly reformed Backstreet Boys who happen to be on a reunion tour this year. It's not the first time the gang has been in a movie with a musical number at the end, however, it's not an Apatow film; Rogen is directing this one, and from what I gathered, for no good reason other than to spoof every contemporary...well, everything, and have a good time with his friends. Unfortunately, the joke is on the film, as perhaps the whole apocalypse thing has been so overdone at this point that it just can't possibly aid this film. Despite the fact that this movie has been praised by critics left and right, I can't manage to see why. If you've ever seen an Apatow film before, or Rogen's previous effort 'Superbad' for that matter, you already know that Rogen and Goldberg, even Apatow himself has done much better. The whole bro-mance genre has been steadily declining in quality for quite sometime now, and the marriage between witty banter and low brow humor has deteriorated into just plan unfunny riffing. Like Vince Vaughn in The Break Up, it gets to a point where it almost seems a bad idea from the start, but the star power makes it's dull and unoriginal premise see a wide theater release in hopes of generating some revenue.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not comparing this film to the break up, but the greater majority of this movie

seems very forced. Basically the whole idea is that Jay Baruchel has decided to head back to L.A to hang out with Seth Rogen, who then invites him to hang out at James Franco's house for a big house warming party. Then the apocalypse happens, of the biblical variety. Michael Cera, who puts on perhaps the worst performance I have ever seen a star of his caliber make, is killed off within the first half hour, followed by Rihanna, who's inclusion in the film is as huge a mystery as to why I even care, and lastly by about half way through the film you'll officially hate everything about Danny McBride, aside from one brief and humorous exchange between him and Franco regarding a magazine. Even with how funny said scene was, it's reliance on trading blows using the same words over and over again gives off the impression that the gang has officially run out of creativity. The film itself seems largely deprived of any genuinely funny banter, and the action moment's actually surpass the dialogue in a film that is for the most part largely action-less. It's really had to regard this movie as anything but a shameless plug that uses the very things it pokes fun at as a way to stay relevant. As a fan of just about every actor/actress in this movie, especially in regards to their onscreen talent, it shouldn't be hard to carve a coherent and funny film out of such a simple premise. It's almost like choosing to cast every role as themselves cost the movie itself to lose all talent and credibility.

By the end of this film you will probably be scratching your head a lot. If you've kept up with how this movie has been performing overall you may ask yourself the same question that I had: Why? This movie was largely unnecessary, and unfunny. I understand that humor is subjective, but given the quality of comedies in the last ten years or so, movies such as 'Superbad', 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall', and 'I Love You, Man', showed that you can have both low and high brow comedy at the same time; these movies were littered with derogatory dialogue and they run circles around a film like this on every level in terms of quality. It's just very hard to laugh at something so uninspired and overdone. A classic case of what I fear, as a movie goer, will happen to all actors and directors I love. Hopefully they've gotten it out of their system now, and I look forward to any future productions that takes us back to the witty antics of this lovable trope.  

Check out the Trailer for This is the End Below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yma-g4gTwlE

Storyline:            Irrelevant, it's about dudes trying to survive the apocalypse...that's

                            the bulk of it.

Characters:        Chances are you know how they are already, and aside from poking fun

                            at each other sometimes, their onscreen selves don't seem to

                            differ much from the character's they generally play in films. 

                           Also, playing themselves sometimes makes everything happening in

                           the movie that much harder to digest, or for that matter, tell who's 

                           in on the joke.

Pacing:              Ridiculous, the set up is okay, but the movie for me fell apart too quickly

                          to really consider this a huge factor in the films success.

Interest Level: Dependent on how serious of a Rogen, Franco, McBride, Robinson, or

                          Hill fan you are, and your thirst for 'too crude' humor. Pass if that 
                          wells run dry for you; cause in terms of eventful, this movie sees the 
                          apocalypse as much less climactic and interesting as one would expect.

Overall:             3.5 out of 10 - I just had an uncomfortable feeling the whole time I 

                           was watching this movie. It just wasn't funny, it wasn't really much of

                           anything other than hard to watch. Recommended if crude humor is 
                           really all that works for you, or you need to see every movie of the

                           Rogen/Goldberg or Apatow pack.