Year End Movie

I missed it when it ran in theaters this summer, but I recently had a chance to catch up on the most unusual of the year's many apocalyptically themed movies, This Is the End. It features a host of actors including James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, Michael Cera, Emma Watson, and more, all playing "themselves" as they cower in hiding from the actual Apocalypse at James Franco's house.

Some movies step right up to the "stupid line" and only flirt with crossing. Others dive across brazenly and never look back. This movie dances back and forth, serving up alternate doses of pure stupidity and clever hilarity. It's the kind of film you're at times not sure you "like," but you most certainly laugh at it all the same.

Most of the humor comes from the actors sending up their own real world personalities. James Franco is skewered as pretentious. Jonah Hill is playfully mocked for being the unlikely Oscar nominee among them. Funniest of all are the people playing against type, like the party girl/badass version of Emma Watson, and the lecherous horndog version of Michael Cera (think Youth in Revolt times 20). There's also a sort of Mars Attacks! quality to the first act, where loads more people cameo just for the fun of being killed off in entertaining ways.

Because everyone is playing an actor, the film is also stuffed with movie and TV references. A third act development that brings in a subplot aping The Exorcist is probably the richest vein of laughs mined in the movie. There are also plenty of cracks about the more questionable choices in these actors' careers.

All told, This Is the End is a pretty satisfying comedy. I give it a B.