Omen holiday

Nearly five years ago to the day, I made a post on my blog about a viral video featuring Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel dealing with the apocalypse. Fast forward to today and that short clip has mushroomed into a full fledged movie. This is the End features Rogen and Baruchel, as well some of their other famous friends like James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, and Danny McBride playing exaggerated versions of themselves as they deal with the end of days.

The film begins with Franco throwing a house party for all of his famous Hollywood friends. This of course leads to several celebrity cameos having fun with their real life personalities. For instance, you'll never be able to look at Michael Cera the same way after having seen this movie. Things turn cataclysmic in a hurry, however, as massive sinkholes develop, sending most of the party guests to their death. The central cast initially survive and barricade themselves in Franco's house unsure of what's happening.

It doesn't take long before the gang goes all Lord of the Flies on each other as they squabble over food rations, sleeping arrangements, and facing their mortality. The amount of humor your derive from these scenes will vary greatly. For me, I found there to be far more misses than hits when it came to the jokes. What was interesting is that most of the scenes weren't unfunny. Rather it's that I found myself sitting there nodding in agreement with what was being said rather than laughing at the anarchy. Because these guys are playing versions of themselves, a lot of the jokes were at the expense of each other. They would mock their personality traits or their bad movies or just their general phoniness. While some will be amused by the self-deprecating nature of the humor, I found myself wondering if these guys shouldn't be taking these comments more seriously and reevaluate their career choices.

Making the film more problematic is the tone that's created surrounding the humor. There are some truly disturbing scenes, especially early on as people meet their untimely death. I realize that the apocalypse isn't exactly a day in the park, but it was hard for me to appreciate the film's humor given the unpleasant setting that it had established. A lot of the horror and craziness of the film felt more like something from Sam Raimi, which is not a genre that I'm particularly fond of.

Despite placing the film within a very specific context, This is the End too often feels disjointed. The film moves from one comedy bit to the next with no sense of progression. Ideas and jokes are introduced but very few get paid off by the end of the film. You'll have things like Emma Watson randomly show up which provides the guys with an opportunity to make a few rape jokes and then she's gone and they move onto the next riff. You begin to see that this has been a project that's been percolating for 5 (or more) years. They have this collection of various ideas that may work individually but really don't add up to anything worthwhile.

I will give credit though for giving the right cast members the appropriate personalities in the film. For instance, Jay Baruchel is intended to serve as the heart and humanity of the film, which works considering he's probably the most likeable and least "Hollywood" of the bunch. Meanwhile, Danny McBride does what he does best by playing the douchy a**hole and Jonah Hill is a disingenuous prick. I probably would have struggled with the film even more than I did had they tried to force unnatural personalities onto any of these guys.

It's interesting that this film comes right off the heels of The Internship. In many ways these films couldn't be more different. While I seem to be in disagreement with a lot of other critics on both of these films, a lot of what my reviews for both pictures come down to is mood. The Internship offered a sunny optimism that infectiously made me enjoy all of the characters in the film. I'd much rather spend two hours with that cast than I would with the dreary, unpleasant narcissism that's on display in This is the End.

After watching this movie, it's become clear that this was an idea that worked as a short viral video and should have stayed at that. As a feature length movie, this is nothing more than a poorly cobbled together collection of bits, some of which are admittedly very funny, that really don't add up to anything more than a crass vanity project for Rogen and co. I actually could do a whole separate post analyzing why the film's final joke doesn't work at all, but given that it features another surprise cameo, I won't discuss it any further here. I have been a fan of a lot of these guys' work in the past, but there have been a lot of misfires by them, Rogen in particular, recently that make me question whether or not I should continue seeing their future films. Unless some drastic changes are made, I'm afraid "this is the end" for me watching this work. Grade: C