This Is The End

A Partially Educated Review of This Is The End

In which the prospect of Seth Rogen and friends dying is apparently enough to make them funny again

To say that things have been going a bit stale for Seth Rogen and his friends as of late isn't too far off the mark. Though it didn't take long for the cracks to start showing, it seems like The Green Hornet signalled the true downward slide for Rogen and, while there's been the odd highlight (50/50), it's all started to get a little bit annoying. So, on that basis, a film which mostly comprises of Seth Rogen and his friends playing themselves whilst trapped inside a house could very well have ended up unbearable. It isn't.

While the end of the world plot device does provide a number of the film's gags, the focus instead is on sending themselves up as characters, taking the perceived notions of how they would be based on their career paths and using this to provide the laughs. While Jay Baruchel serves as the hipster loner that hasn't had as much success as the others, Danny McBride is selfish, irritating and slightly evil, managing the incredibly difficult task of being annoying, but using that to create humour rather than just irritation. This, of course, begs the question of why McBride can't do that in all of his other films. 

The best comedy, however, comes from the triumvirate that is James Franco, Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson. Franco and Hill both latch on to their successes outside of comedy with Franco falling head-long into pretension. Hill, meanwhile, is trying to avoid this, but failing miserably. As he takes a moment to pray, he makes sure that God realises he is "Jonah Hill from Moneyball". Robinson, on the other hand, plays the same character he plays in everything else, but, much like McBride, has somehow found a way to make it funny. He comes out as the most likeable by far, serving as the biggest peacekeeper in the house, but avoiding the whininess this could cause. While many of the film's highlights come from the actor's video testimonials, Robinson's is of particular note.

Strange then that Seth Rogen doesn't achieve the same quality, despite the fact that he's one of the writers. It could have gone far better than it does, as an early send-up of the "Seth Rogen laugh" suggests that he's going to try something a bit different, but he really hasn't. Instead, he falls back into the same character that Rogen always plays. It may be that the character is how he is in real life, but bar one notable moment (also on a video testimonial), I can't remember any of the other points where he actually made me laugh. I'm fairly certain that's because he didn't.

He does, however, fare better in his other role as co-director with Evan Goldberg. The end of the world plot could leave this open for set-piece after set-piece, going for the easy laughs with the character's reactions. While there are some of these and, to be fair, they mostly work, the film is at it's best and funniest when the characters are allowed to just be themselves within the confines of the house. As a result, (and without giving anything away) the ending marks a slight drop in the laugh count with the very last scenes lacking the final laughs that the film deserved. In addition, the ending hosts a notable cameo that's good for nostalgia, but still feels a little cheap. This is a shame as the abundance of cameos throughout the rest of the film are all handled really well and provide genuine laughs, with top prizes going to Michael Cera and Danny McBride's, shall we say, "companion".

There was always the risk that this was going to be a vanity project. To be fair, it is a vanity project, but it's one that has the decency to be funny with it. It's not just some well-established comedy actors laughing at how funny they are, but instead them lamenting about how annoying they've all got and leaving us to do the laughing on their behalf. When you take into account that last year's other source of multiple comic actors coming together in the name of film was Grown Ups 2, This Is The End feels like a masterpiece.

FOUR out of five