Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes
Rating: R
Directors: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Quick Impressions:
It’s so exciting when a movie opens on a Tuesday because that’s our date night. At first we planned to see Kings of Summer (which has been likened to Superbad), but when I realized that This Is the End (from the writers of Superbad) was opening so early in the week, we decided to save Kings of Summer for next Tuesday night.
There was a time when I could watch Superbad practically every day without tiring of it. (I can’t do that now because I spend my days hanging out with a four-year-old.) I’m not sure why I like it quite so much. It’s just that few movies manage to be so authentic, fantastical, obscene and sweetly innocent all at once. Plus on TV, I’m a big fan of comedy. I like to get all cataclysms and epic battles out of the way on a big screen with great sound. When I’m just hanging out at home, I prefer to watch something that makes me laugh.
The kooky meta premise of the This Is the End also appealed to me—Seth Rogen and all his pals gather for a party at James Franco’s house when suddenly the apocalypse happens. How could anybody not want to see that? I mean, the actors-playing-themselves thing is hardly a novel idea, but most of them play themselves as such delightful jackasses that it’s really hard not to be swept away into the fun. Besides when I think of what tortures might await unraptured souls left on earth to endure the End of Days, attending a party at James Franco’s house does spring readily to mind.
Of course, in real life, it’s not the apocalypse that’s coming (this weekend) (I hope), it’s Man of Steel, so opening this film so early was probably a sensible move. These days, it’s pretty hard to push limits in comedy on the big screen. Audiences who go expecting a hard R are pretty hard to shock, but to its credit, this movie tries (and occasionally succeeds). Even though the final act feels a little slow (or, at least, the laughs in that portion don’t come as fast and as consistently), the set-up is laugh-out-loud fun, and the zanily random ending is perfection. Surely most audiences know what to expect from a Seth Rogen penned comedy about the apocalypse coming during a party at James Franco’s house. If that sounds funny to you, then you’ll probably like it. If you think you’ll be offended, you will. If you’d rather stay home, go for it. But I really enjoyed the movie, and if you think you’ll like it, too, then you might as well go.
The Good:
Until recently, I’ve never really seen the appeal of James Franco. But I did enjoy his performance in Spring Breakers as pathetically adorable, bizarrely misguided, materialist drug-lord wannabe Alien. In This Is the End, he plays someone even easier to mock than Alien and our doomed society—himself, James Franco. As far as I’m concerned, the elder Franco always comes across as bafflingly smug and condescending. (For me, the question often asked by the press, “How does James Franco do everything?” had an obvious answer—“Badly.” It’s like no one ever pointed out to him that genuinely interesting people don’t devote entire interviews to waxing poetic about how interesting they find themselves.)
Now that I’ve bashed James Franco (who has accomplished one-hundred times what I have), I’ll go on to say that I think he gives the best performance in this movie. As an actor, he’s beginning to grow on me, and playing himself like this is perhaps the best thing I’ve ever see him do. (Maybe he should star as himself in a TV show with his brother Dave that’s kind of like a faux-reality version of Frasier shot mockumentary style. I’d watch that. Of course, I’d watch anything with Dave Franco.)
Franco’s delightful dynamic with Danny McBride was one of my favorite things about This Is the End. (My other favorite thing was Michael Cera. I was so disappointed when I realized that he wouldn’t be in it anymore. His scenes genuinely surprised me. He begins from a place that’s so outlandish that you’d think there’d be nowhere else to go, but he just keepings going and going and going. Each scene he’s in is more unexpectedly outrageous than the last. Now granted, all too often that kind of obnoxious shock comedy completely fails to be funny, but it’s really funny here. This is good work from Cera and a really smart move. I hope it helps his career.)
But back to James Franco and Danny McBride. More often than not, McBride is a bit over-the-top for my tastes. Sometimes he pushes jokes so far that they stop working for me. (At the same time, though, I can see that they work for others, so it’s more a matter of personal preference than a criticism of McBride’s comedy style.) In this film, I think he’s perfect—which is not to say that he’s any different here over-the-topness-wise (the exchange about the magazine is hardly an example of restraint and subtlety), but in a comedy about the end of the world, the over-the-topness seems appropriate. It works particularly because Franco is doing half the work, engaging in a sinister dynamic. They do it so well. It’s like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing (but with more masturbation jokes). (Wouldn’t it be funny, though, if during screenings at exclusive Hollywood parties, Fred and Ginger’s movies had their intimate circle in stitches, all screaming, “The censors never even realized that entire dance sequence was just an inside joke about masturbation!” But nothing I’ve ever heard about Ginger Rogers supports such a delightful impossibility!)
In general, the movie succeeds in getting so many laughs because it uses all different kinds of humor. (In the sold-out auditorium, there were stretches when virtually everyone was laughing out loud. But other moments elicited pockets of laughter and always from different people.)
Some of the most obvious jokes are so puerile and silly that it’s a little ridiculous. (After the film, my husband wondered rhetorically, “Why does every Jonah Hill movie seem to end with a severed penis?” Why indeed?) The thing is, even the dumbest, crudest, laziest jokes hit occasionally (because they’re punched so often that they wear you down). But then at the same time, there are several other levels of humor (jokes that are more sophisticated, jokes that are more random, jokes that require quick associations and knowledge of allusions, jokes that involve ongoing relationships) working to great effect.
One of the most interesting things about the humor in the movie is that sometimes jokes begin rather flat but near the end suddenly become shockingly hilarious. Usually in movies, that happens the other way (a joke starts out brilliant but then gets run into the ground because the film’s editors haven’t learned that less is more). This is one of the few movies I’ve ever seen where the reverse is true. Moments that are too lazy to be funny are suddenly redeemed at the last minute by the randomness of a line or the wonderful specificity of a cameo. (There’s one moment in particular that is not funny at all. Suddenly, because of a well-used cameo it becomes completely hilarious.)
Franco and McBride’s sinisterly troubled dynamic isn’t the only relationship drama going on. There’s not a central character in this film who doesn’t have an (increasingly) odd relationship with someone (and sometimes everyone) else.
The earnest troubled friendship between Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel is perhaps the least interesting relationship in the whole movie. But it’s also the narrative strand that helps to give the entire film the (little) shape and coherence (it has). I find Seth Rogen immensely likeable, but he gives himself one of the most boring roles in this film. He and Baruchel seem more like real people and less like caricatures of their press-generated personas (except for all the excessive drug use). I suppose every film needs protagonists who complete some kind of meaningful journey. And despite the zany premise (and the film’s obvious privilege of laughs over story), This Is the End actually does relate a coherent story with a (surprisingly positive and non-blasphemous) message.
Craig Robinson manages to walk the fine line between being funny and being a likable human being. He’s very funny at moments, and (unlike some of the others) he’s very rarely painfully unfunny. Yet his character (though exaggerated and sometimes intentionally bizarre) feels (except for those random hyper-exaggerated, throw away joke moments) much more normal than some. Compared to the others, Craig always seems like a pretty decent guy whose moments of extraordinarily weird behavior are due mainly to the extreme circumstances. Most of the time, Rogen and Baruchel feel like the “realistic” protagonists while Franco, McBride, and Hill are all playing bizarre caricatures of themselves (based usually on one exaggerated characteristic) and
going for big laughs rather than realistic character development. But Craig Robinson manages to hover somewhere in the middle. You care about him as a character, and he shows real growth as a person. Yet at the same time, he almost always manages to be funny.
Best Scene:
The instant when Seth and Jay (fresh from the convenience store) return to the party and walk through the door into the crowded room is played just perfectly. That moment just really works. It’s funny in a perfectly fitting, horrible, dark, hopeless way, and everybody involved plays it just right.
Best Scene Visually:
The visuals are this movie’s downfall. (Well, actually, that’s harsh. I think the special effects are intentionally weak and amateurish looking.) I’m not qualified to discuss cinematography in technical terms, so I’ll just say that the movie looks ugly. (It’s supposed to, I think.) More than that, it looks very confusing and haphazard, like something you might film with your phone and then upload to YouTube. (The camera’s not shaky. It’s just that the scenes appear to be composed simply of whatever happens to be in the frame.) You never get a very good sense of where the people are (other than in James Franco’s house) or what’s going on outside or how anything is oriented. In terms of looks, what I like best is the video diaries. The cast makes a lot of this gimmick. Some great moments (comedically) come from the actors’ ability to utilize this space in the funniest way possible.
Most of the time, though, everything seems so ugly and haphazard that part of me wonders if it’s all some kind of elaborate joke that ties into James Franco’s repeated rantings about how everything is art. If I see the film again, I’m going to watch with that in mind.
Most Daring Scene:
I can’t write a review without mentioning Jonah Hill’s bit with the gun, which is probably the most resonant scene in the entire movie. I can imagine film historians of the future discussing this scene. I found it fascinating because everyone’s reaction made me stop and think about how much our society has changed. The things that used to shock us don’t anymore. We’re used to being grossed out and pelted with verbal and visual obscenities of one kind or another. Sometimes it seems like we’ve become totally jaded—and then we get a moment like this to show us that it’s still very possible to make people uncomfortable by pushing limits. (What makes us uncomfortable has just changed.) I can’t even remember the last time I saw a scene like this in a movie. We used to see stuff like this all the time (especially in cartoons), but you don’t see it anymore. And it was funny, too, probably my favorite moment from Jonah Hill.
Meanest Joke:
James Franco’s joke about his ill-advised one-night-stand is so lazy and mean-spirited. He’s just taking a cheap shot at any easy target, which seems so like the real Franco—until the joke goes on a little bit and we realize that the real target is Franco himself. I thought this particular bit (like many of Franco’s moments) was quite well written because at first it seems so lazy but then, the longer you think about it, the cleverer it becomes.
Funniest Scene:
I like people who can poke fun at themselves, and I love the way Franco has such fun making (what is likely a misconception of) himself appear ridiculous. I love the way that all of his scenes manage to incorporate some joke about his pretentiousness. His fight with Danny McBride about the magazine is so crude and juvenile, but his one-line defense of having the magazine in the first place made me laugh out loud.
Michael Cera deserves some kind of award (Best Actor in a Prolonged Cameo?). Also brilliant were cameos by Channing Tatum and Paul Rudd. (Obviously, Tatum’s moment is much more showcased, but Rudd’s also cracked me up. It’s hard to explain why, though, without spoiling the moment.)
But they really do save the best for last. As the movie went on and on, I began to wonder to myself, “How in the world can this end?” (Early on, there’s a moment that can be read either as foreshadowing or the justification for an it-was-all-a-drug-induced-dream type trick. For a while I thought things might go that way. And then I started to wonder if the blue light might not actually be something else.) I didn’t see how the movie could end well, even how it could end at all. But the way they concluded the film was a stroke of genius. The film’s final moments felt bizarrely perfect and made almost everyone in the theater crack up laughing out loud.
Best Action Sequence:
The initial episode in the convenience store really gets your attention, and Jonah Hill’s uncomfortable moment in bed reminded me hilariously of something I have always mocked about the film Rosemary’s Baby. There are several moments when the movie manages to make most people in the audience gasp or jump. But how often in most movies do you get to see Emma Watson screaming profanity and wielding an axe? I suppose that probably wins, though Franco’s fate is pretty gripping as well.
The Negatives:
It would have been nice to get some closure on Emma Watson’s character. (That seems an odd phrase to use when she’s playing “Emma Watson,” but obviously playing yourself in an apocalypse horror/comedy is not the same thing as playing yourself in a documentary.) Considering the billing she gets, she really should be in the movie more. I expected to see her one last time.
Also, the movie is pretty great. But you know what would have been even better—a feature length film about “Michael Cera” making more and more of an ass of himself at “James Franco’s” party. After a while, most things get old, but a movie only needs to last ninety minutes or so. I’m confident that I could have kept laughing at Michael Cera for the duration of the film.
And though I don’t think I would ever say this about any other film or television show (because ordinarily, just the opposite is true), I think the movie would have benefitted from even more celebrity cameos. Now I’m not saying there’s time for everybody to get a huge feature cameo, but they could have crowded more people into the background at the party and included Easter egg type visual gags that an audience would likely only catch when pausing a Blu-ray. (Of course, maybe they have done this, and I just haven’t noticed yet.) Some of the celebrity cameos in this are so outstanding. I think that every single person in the background at Franco’s party should have been recognizably famous (of course, there is a possibility that they are, but just not recognizably famous to me).
As a general rule, jokes about rape aren’t funny, but This Is the End does a pretty good job of finding humor that could arise out of a misunderstanding about rape. The initial reaction/non-reaction of everybody but Jay about receiving an unexpected visitor was a surprising (though perhaps unrealistic) way of handling the situation. Somehow this all turns out to be much funnier than seems possible. Usually, too, when irreverent comedies address religious topics, they manage to be not-so-funny and often offensive (sometimes even to me, and I take offense at almost nothing. If you offend me, you have to be trying to be offensive purely out of a mean-spirited desire to offend. But am I person of faith, and I too often find R-rated attempts at engaging with religion more cringe inducing than hilarious.) Jokes made at the expense of misguided humans are fine, but there is a line. What amazed me is that This Is the End doesn’t really cross that line. At one point you fully expect it to, but the message that this movie puts out there is, in the end, surprisingly moral. (I mean, you wouldn’t want to show it to little kids instead of sending them to religious education classes of some sort, but the film seems to suggest that God does exist, the rapture is real, we ought to love one another, wishing harm on others is morally wrong.) Now of course, the entire story is so ridiculous that you never get the idea that Rogen and company are providing the public with solid advice on how to get to heaven based on their actual religious beliefs. But these comedians seem less interested in mocking religion than they are in mocking themselves, which is actually kind of refreshing.
Okay, so if everything I just said in the previous paragraph is actually a positive thing about the film, why say all that in a section called “The Negatives”? The reason is, I’ve been working up to this question: In a film that shows itself capable of bypassing the lazy, predictable route and using surprisingly sophisticated and sensitive humor, do there have to be so many dick jokes?
Now that I sat through this nearly two-hour movie, the writers and cast have thoroughly convinced me that they know what a penis is. They know what penises look like. They know who has them. They know what they’re for. But do they know what a joke is?
Given the movie’s R rating and general delight in being naughty, I don’t really object to the omnipresent penises (or penes, as the dictionary advises me). But if they’re going to talk about them and show them constantly, couldn’t they take a little extra trouble and come up with some actual humor about them? Far too often, the penis is the joke—like just the word penis or an image of a penis. That’s the joke. That may work for Beavis, Butt-head, and the occasional regretful wife, but I think if a penis is going to be the only punchline, it had better come unexpectedly (and after two hours of penis after penis being thrust upon us, we are definitely not shocked by the entrance of yet another one).
Another problem is that the pacing starts to seem off about the time Jonah Hill receives a surprise visitor. From that point forward, the movie seems slower and less cohesive than before, though the delightfully random ending makes up for a lot of little problems beforehand.
Overall:
This Is the End is pretty funny. For me, the laughs came faster and more consistently during the first two thirds, but there’s a late cameo that’s priceless, and the final scene won me over with its sheer randomness. I’m not sure how soon I’d be ready to commit to rewatching the entire thing, but I would rewatch Michael Cera’s delightful scenes right now, again and again until somebody made me stop. (Well, after a few times, I would probably be the person making me stop, but it’s still funny stuff worthy of at least one repeat viewing.) The opening act of the movie is great, and Cera is a surprise delight. James Franco’s performance is probably my favorite in the movie, but the whole core ensemble works well together, and each of them provides at least one laugh out loud moment (usually more). If you’re not expecting crude, immature, shocking, and potentially offensive humor from this movie then I don’t know what you’re smoking, but if you usually like the R rated comedies created by/for these guys, then you’ll probably like this one, too. I’m glad I went.