Susan Granger’s review of “This Is the End” (Columbia Pictures/Sony)
This crass, raunchy, ribald comedy begins with co-writer/director Seth Rogen picking up his
long-time friend and fellow Canadian Jay Baruchel at Los Angeles International Airport. As they walk through the terminal, a paparazzo approaches them, quizzing Seth: “Why do you play the same character in every movie?”
Despite Baruchel’s distasteful reluctance, they move on to James Franco’s housewarming party,
where they mix and mingle with TinselTown’s Michael Cera, Paul Rudd, Kevin Hart, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jason Segel and Aziz Ansari – until the cataclysmic Biblical apocalypse – as described in the Book of Revelation – hits, an earthquake followed by a sinkhole. Many are killed, leaving Rogen, Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, and uninvited Danny McBride trapped inside Franco’s
fortress-like mansion, isolated as horned demons and zombies roam the acrid Hollywood Hills while True Believers ascend into Heaven in The Rapture. The survivors turn out to be exaggerated sociological archetypes of any group of male friends, even when their caricatured conversation delves into selfishness, stoner excess, selling out and entitlement in our contemporary celebrity culture.
Unevenly written and indulgently directed by collaborators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (“Superbad,” “Pineapple Express,” “The Green Hornet”), it’s, basically, a sustained series
of sketches of boorish frat-pack lunacy – with Rihanna, Mindy Kaling and axe-wielding Emma Watson as token females amid the “rapey vibe.” FYI: although it’s ostensibly set in LA, for financial reasons, it was filmed in New Orleans.
As the story goes, when Rogen and Goldberg submitted their directors’ cut to the MPAA ratings board, they expected an NC-17 rating, not only because of the vulgar profanity and drug use but also
because of the graphic, often perverted sex scenes, including one between a human and a satanic beast with a phallus larger than Mark Wahlberg’s Dirk Diggler in “Boogie Nights.” To their amazement, they got an R, which even they admitted was ludicrous.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “This Is the End” is a subversive, self-deprecating, sexist
6, a horror zonk-fest designed to blow a guy’s mind.
