The Avengers for comedians?

This is the End is a comedy film written and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. It stars the entire “Apatow Crew”, plus many other familiar celebrity faces. The plot goes something like this; while attending a party at James Franco’s house, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and many other celebrities are faced with the apocalypse.



Now, most of the main actors in the film (Rogen, McBride, ect) have fallen into a bit of rut lately. Picking projects that haven’t exactly been the greatest. However, I am still a pretty large fan of these guys. I grew up with their comedies throughout my middle-school years and have continued to love them ever since; and two hours of them just going off on each other should make for a pretty hilarious ride, right?

Hell yes.

I went into This is the End with pretty high expectations and it somehow surpassed them.

Comedies are typically the hardest movies to review because everyone has their own comedic taste. So, what some might find funny, others might not. I could honestly just rip this movie apart and say there wasn’t any character development and the acting was sub-par. But really, you can’t judge a broad comedy like that. You judge it with; did I have a fun time and did I laugh? Happily enough, I laughed pretty consistently here. But maybe this is just my kind of humor.

Most of the film seemed pretty unscripted and more improvised. Which gave the actors room to riff and come up with some pretty ingenious stuff. There were multiple instances where I was laughing so hard my ribs hurt. Particularity a sequence titled “The Exorcism of Jonah Hill”. Only these guys can come up with stuff like that.

I don’t really wanna spoil anything because there’s some genuine surprises here. From cameos to even subplots that I didn’t expect.

On top of it all, the special effects were also pretty damn good for a below 30 million dollar budget film and are used in some pretty creative ways. Even some of the action scenes were really solid.

The only thing problem here is that not everyone is going to get all of the jokes. The film is essentially one big inside joke between the actors. There are lots of pop-culture references towards themselves and even some LA jokes scattered around here and there, but I think if you know anything about the actors, you’ll be able to follow along pretty easily.

Really though. For a movie like this, you just go in to laugh, and I’m guilty for doing so. So, honestly. It’s just a really funny, satisfying movie that quenched my comedic thirst until at least the new Simon Pegg movie.

4.5/5 Stars

- @KieranTriplett