Ebert Did It Better: Gasbag Reviews

This is the End – 2013

Written and Directed by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Starring Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Emma Watson, Mindy Kaling, Paul Rudd, Aziz Ansari

This is exactly the movie that you thought it would be.  It’s a movie where everyone gets to play a version of themselves that they want us to see.  They better get it right, because there’s not much one can do to top the end of the world.  In a cast as big as this one, it’s an interesting choice to have Baruchel at the lead.  This is good for the film.  If it’s gotta be someone, why not the one who seems to have the least to offer?

In the first act, everyone is at a party at James Franco’s new house.  Jay is in from out-of-town, visiting Seth.  He did not want to go to the party, but Seth cajoles him into going.  We get to see everyone acting like an exaggerated version of their public image.  Except for Rihanna.  I think they may have undershot that one.  We see plenty of Michael Cera…they definitely overshot that one.  Then all hell breaks loose from  the underworld.

No one who sees this film will be unaware of what to expect.  People who like to get wasted watch the world turn into a wasteland.  Nothing I write here will change your mind one way or the other.  Either you liked Superbad, Pineapple Express, etc,, or you didn’t.  Personally, I was happy to see a lot of Craig Robinson, and I liked that they went with Baruchel.  The rest of it, is really just a bunch of stuff I think would happen if people who liked comedy and getting high made a comedy about getting high during the apocalypse.

Some of it is funny, some is laborious.  None of this is any more groundbreaking than, say, Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny.  There is plenty of self-depreciation and moments that could be conceived as funnier had the principal actors not spent much of their careers doing the same thing in most of their other films.

“You can’t stop, drop and open up shop alone?” says Rogen, laying next to his buddy, Jay, on the first post-rapture sleepover.  So they spend the rest of the film together.  If you like the company, you’ll like the movie.

(***)