Just when I was starting to think feature film comedy has keeled over and died a slow, agonizing death, the usual suspects come out and prove me wrong. This Is The End is not only the funniest film this year so far, but is also a great apocalypse/disaster story that uses the closed circle plot device to its advantage with a talented cast of comedians and Judgment Day. As of the time of this writing, I saw the film two days ago and my sides are still split from this raunchy blockbuster that only further shows that The Hangover Part 3 is a sad, sorry excuse for a summer comedy flick.
The film pits various comedians and actors such as Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride and James Franco playing more or less fictional versions of their celebrity selves. One day, on the night of James Franco?s huge house-warming party, the apocalypse decides to start, and it begins to rain hell from above, below and any direction you can think to look. By the end of the night, it?s down to just six actors stuck in the duct-tape fortress that is Franco?s ruined home as they struggle to survive and figure out what to do next.
The first act of the film offers plenty of laughs and cameos in the form of a coked-out Michael Cera (along with Christopher Mintz-Plasse in a hilarious Superbad pseudo-reunion with Jonah Hill), the rest of the Apatow crew (Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, etc.), and Hermione herself, Emma Watson. After the cameos die gruesome on-screen deaths, the laughs don?t stop rolling in because of some of the best use of satirical, referential and ironic humor I have seen since Ted. Even some of the cheaper, cruder jokes got a laugh out of me that probably wouldn?t have in a worse film. The major joke here is that most of the main cast is playing exaggerated versions of themselves, or at least how they see how the media sees them. For instance, James Franco plays himself as a would-be art snob. Jonah Hill is a living saint and resident ?nicest guy in the world?. Seth Rogen is playing, well, more or less the type of role he plays in all of his movies, but it works exceptionally in this situation. Jay Baruchel is the protagonist and is a hipster-outcast, but is still the straight man of the group (just writing that sentence produced a chuckle out of me).
It?s important to note, that while The End is a comedy/apocalypse movie, it isn?t a parody of the genre per se, as much as it is a horror-apocalypse film that centers focus on comedic aspects, a similarity it shares with Edgar Wright?s Shaun of the Dead. It still manages to fit in some horrific and suspenseful moments, as an apocalypse would bring those emotions to people. Writers Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen crucially remembered that the key to comedy is tragedy plus time. That?s not to say the film gives you much time before throwing the audience a good joke, it just means the film doesn?t forget that you can?t have comedy without some drama as a foundation, especially in the black comedy genre that this film embraces (don?t expect any taboo topic not to go untouched in this film, including, but not limited to: religion, anti-religion, rape, murder, destruction and Spider-Man 3).
I would say the film excels past the more serious and grounded disaster films (The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, The Impossible) in that it forgoes spectacle in favor of putting focus on the people that must experience the disaster. The film builds a connection to Jay and Seth?s relationship troubles and makes you feel sympathy for the once best friends that were drifting away even before the end of the world started happening. As a good comedy film should do, the humor doesn?t detract from this drama, but enhances it even more, building a more relatable, and human connection to the characters. I think the biggest problem with most comedy films these days is that most of them stick in an obligatory dramatic subplot, and then the film would treat this drama and the comedy of the rest of the film as two separate products that should never cross-contaminate, and The End avoids doing this magnificently.
The third act of the film isn?t lacking in the cameos department either, but also has some surprisingly gigantic set pieces. I have never seen such production values for a black comedy before, but I guess this film proves there is a greater market for the genre. I don?t want to spoil any of the aforementioned cameos, but they are exponentially funnier than the cameos of the party scene though. If you don?t like the previous works of the Apatow alumni and crew (Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) I wouldn?t recommend this film because of the crudeness, but everyone else should see this picture right away. I believe this film will spawn plenty of copycats just as The Hangover did, and next we will see the SNL cast use this same formula on a sinking boat or something.
Like what you see here? Read more at The Spectacular Cinephile blogger page. [http://speccinephile.blogspot.com/]