REVIEW:
This Is The End
(Sony Pictures, R16)
Extras, The Larry Sanders Show, Being John Malkovich and now This Is The End. Or is it
It’s so post-post modern to have actors playing warped versions of themselves that even Seth Rogen is getting in on the act.
Occasionally confused with Seth Green and Seth MacFarlane, Seth Rogen is the laid-back writer/director/actor behind the snort-out-loud-funny comedies Pineapple Express, Knocked Up and Superbad. He’s the Kevin Smith of the fratboy set. When Kevin Smith isn’t filling that job description, that is.
The scenario is this: Film buddies Rogen and Baruchel go to a ludicrously ostentacious Hollywood party at James Franco’s palatial house, and have a (mostly) good time when, without warning, the apocalypse happens. It’s the whole works – hellfire and brimstone, huge holes opening up to the centre of the planet, monsters and demons walking the earth and messily devouring the survivors.
Trapped inside Franco’s house, a group of survivors including Franco, Rogen, Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson – all playing themselves – barricade themselves against the creatures and the remnants of humanity who, outside, are embracing depravity and reverting to feral, brutal type. As are, in a slightly more sarcastic and egocentric way, are those inside. Hey, this is Hollywood after all.
As long as you don’t take the biblical apocalypse angle too seriously (and how could you) this is a lot of low-brow fun. And isn’t it nice to see, in what other films might describe as cameo appearances, the likes of Emma Watson and Rihanna taking the mickey out of themselves
Brilliantly bad taste and genius-ly juvenile, This Is The End won’t fill you with joy for the rest of humanity, but there are plenty of worse ways to spend 102 minutes.
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