Well, after my last review in The Internship where I said there was barely life in the early 2000’s generation of comedy actors and the genre – turns out I was a bit wrong with that with this week’s release of This Is The End, with it’s superb high concept, terrific energetic cast and actual good comedy.
So real life friends growing up, actors Seth Rogen (The Guilt Trip) and Jay Baruchel (Cosmopolis), meet up for a weekend at Seth’s pad in Hollywood and indulge in Jay’s favourite things before a bored Rogen gets wind of a party at James Franco’s (Oz The Great & Powerful) new house. During the course of the crazy night, Seth and Jay have a tiff over Seth’s change of lifestyle after the pair grew up together in Canada. Unfortunately, Judgement Day puts a stop to this and the Apocalypse happens. Barely making it back to Franco’s impenetrable fortress of a house, the three end up holing up with Jonah Hill (The Watch), Danny McBride (Eastbound & Down) and Craig Robinson (Hot Tub Time Machine) as the six funnymen deal with Armageddon and wonder if they have a shot at getting into Heaven.
Do I really have to say anything about the cast? Just look at the exceptional comedy talent here! Rogen is back to his best after a ropey couple of years. The fact that he’s writing and making his directing debut here probably helps but you know what he’s playing off the stoner comedy which made him famous in films like Knocked Up and Pineapple Express and he does it so well, it’s hard not to enjoy Rogen’s average man schtick.
Playing up best to the Hollywood actor trope is Franco. Now Franco is a top draw actor now yet he hasn’t forgotten his roots in comedy like Pineapple Express so it’s grand to see him come back down to this level from film when others would probably shun away from it. Despite being generous enough to let the other guys camp out at his place, he keeps his own stash and is wonderfully slimy throughout in an entertaining turn. Best out of the big three however is Jonah Hill. I like how he shuns Seth and Jay’s friendship whilst trying to get on with Jay before becoming a complete arsehole to him later on, which leads to some of the best scenes in the entire film.
Compared to the three Hollywood heavyweights, McBride and Robinson more than hold their own. McBride keeps up by playing up his loud, sarcastic prick man character from Eastbound & Down but to bigger and better extremes. He calls Hill the C word to his face for Christmas’ sake! Robinson was really solid and stepped away from being just another anonymous background character that he’s perceived as in some of his latest outings and really builds on his acting ‘coming of age’ from Hot Tub Time Machine.
However, the real highlight for me was a breakout performance for Baruchel. Again, he’s always been one of these ‘friend of the stars’ and been in the background in plenty of Rogen’s comedies but here he more than holds a candle to the more well known actors, given the ball and slam dunking it home. The struggles of the friendship between the pair are great and the two playoff each other really well – it seems genuine at times which helps the story of This Is The End a lot.
Of course, there’s some great celebrity cameos with one of the highlights being Rhianna slapping out Michael Cera which I’m sure most cinemagoers have been dying to see for awhile since Cera plays the same sodding role over and over again. Actually, he’s more than happy to take the mick out of himself as a shellsuit wearing, coke fiend assclown who sleeps with groupies constantly. The Emma Watson storyline could have done with a bit more than the two short scenes we get. Seriously, there’s potential for an axe wielding Hermione in the post apocalypse! There’s more background guys from other films and TV shows but they’re hardly given any good lines or interesting moments.
Whilst not going into it as much as I liked, the send up of Hollywood lifestyles is fantastic. All six main actors as well as the numerous cameos are more than willing to send themselves up or go against the stereotypes they’re perceived to have. Cera as a coke fiend nonwithstanding, the embracement of the diva attitudes of the six men are fabulous. Despite categorising all their important food and drink to see out the apocalypse, the six still find time to argue over who has the only Milky Way in the house.
What I like about This Is The End is that for most part, the comedy and jokes are all against the actors themselves and the Hollywood culture. There’s no harm done against the disabled, overweight or more intelligent that we’ve seen and done times infinity and considering it plays up to religion tropes in judgement day, it’s handled particularly well. The negative aspects of religion like Hell and Satan have mick rightly taken but Heaven and praying aspects are treated right and fairly. It seems rather child like, A-B-C treatment but it works and there are some quality scenes in the second half on the film.
It also creates the best theme in the whole film – the survivors wonder what they’ve done so bad in their careers to not get into Heaven and what they can do to get there. It makes them realise, whilst they have led lives where they’ve given joy to people through their movies, they’ve always been paid handsomely and led dream lifestyles. Thus, they all have to do one good deed before they can get out of Hell on Earth. It’s quite humbling that they acknowledge all this before they go off and do some other multimillion dollar piece of fluff.
If there’s one real critique here, it’s that your mileage may vary on the actual cast. If you’re not a fan on some level of the main 6 comedy actors then there’s little else for you. This Is The End assumes that you know the previously films they’ve been in together and you’re familiar on their careers and backgrounds. If not, you will miss out on jokes altogether like the Pineapple Express 2 trailer. Also, whilst the opening and ending are particularly strong, the film is a tad dull in the middle.
Still, we’ll be hard pressed to have a better comedy film this year. This Is The End not only gives a terrific send up of some of Hollywood’s great young comedy actors but there’s some genuinely warmth in the friendship between Seth and Jay and there’s no real nasty mocking. It’s reaffirmed my belief in a previously dying genre. Highly enjoyable and genuinely funny – Must see.
