- "And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads" - Revelation 12:3 (KJV)
- "(You Gotta Fight) For Your Right To Party" - the Beastie Boys, "Fight For Your Right (To Party)," from the album "Licensed to Ill"
Having grown up in the Baptist church, I was about eight- or nine-years-old when I first learned of "The Second Coming" and "The Last Days" and "The End of Days" - all otherwise known as "Judgment Day," or, more simply, the Apocalypse, or "The Rapture." Needless to say, as a young prepubescent kid who had previously been raised to believe that God forgives all and loves all and that God was not a wrathful or vengeful god (except in the biblical Old Testament), this scared the living hell (no pun intended) out of me. Over time, however, as I grew older and more mature and adopted a more realistic and symbolic, and less literal, attitude, toward religion, my fear of the biblical "end times" subsided.
But I'm also a movie fan, and have come to realize, as well, that God has a sense of humor. I knew this first-hand when I watched Kevin Smith's "Dogma" (1999). "Dogma's" mix of God-loving spiritual and philosophical musings combined with gross-out toilet humor most certainly played some sort of influence on the 2013 apocalyptic horror-comedy "This Is the End," which marries its unique blend of Judd Apatow gross-out gags, stoner humor, and gratuitous violence with "survivalist hoarding and eschatological speculation" (borrowing the words of Ann Hornaday, in her two-star "The Washington Post" review of the film) and prevents "This Is the End" from simply being another dumb, ridiculously violent union of post-"Scream" cynicism with self-aware meta-humor and horror.
It's taken me 10 years to get to "This Is the End," a film that has long been on the back-burner of my extensive film collection. Having been indoctrinated into the Apatow brand with such classics like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" (2005), "Knocked Up" (2007), "Superbad" (2007), "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" (2008) and my personal favorite, "Pineapple Express" (2008), "This Is the End" seems like a fitting summation of that late-2000s era of Canadian-bred semi-improvisational, pop-culture-digesting slacker comedy. It's coming to us from the writing and directing team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (in their directorial debut, and based on the 2007 Jason Stone-directed short film "Seth and Jay versus the Apocalypse"), and it features a mega-cast that includes Rogen himself, and other Apatow "Freaks and Geeks" regulars like Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, and Emma Watson - along with a who's-who of other familiar Hollywood celebrities, each playing exaggerated, deeply depraved versions of themselves at a house party in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles.
The set-up is surprisingly innocuous: Jay Baruchel arrives in L. A. to hang out with his close friend Seth Rogen, the latter of whom has pre-emptively set out a welcome party of weed, soda, Starburst candy, and 3-D television - all Jay's favorites. The evening's events then move to a house-warming party at James Franco's mansion in the hills just outside of downtown Los Angeles, where a slew of celebrity cameos including Aziz Ansari, Kevin Hart, Mindy Kaling, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Rihanna, Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, and Martin Starr - along with the aforementioned Cera (for whom the term "playing against type" was practically invented) and Watson (whom Rogen famously said earlier this year walked off the set due to her objections over the film's content) - make themselves known. Before you know it, a series of powerful earthquakes, mysterious blue lights from the sky and a rash of unexplained disappearances around the city throw the party-goers into full-on survival mode, leaving only a small band of would-be heroes that includes Baruchel (my target character in the movie and the most relatable of the film's nominal protagonists), Franco, Hill, McBride, Rogen, and Robinson to ride out the Apocalypse in Franco's fortified Hollywood mansion.
From there, the usual raunchy antics of past Apatow comedies becomes apparent; boozy stoner humor and hilarious raunch (the guys' D-I-Y improv of a sequel to "Pineapple Express" is especially brilliant and laugh-out-loud funny in its banality and stupidity and for off-handedly foreshadowing one principal actor's fate late in the film's third act, as well as its sly critiques of past flops like "The Green Hornet" and "Your Highness," and a riotous sequence featuring references to both "The Exorcist" AND "Rosemary's Baby") combine with the nihilistic post-apocalyptic survival-horror that's become so familiar to anyone that's paid attention to the likes of "The Walking Dead" over the past decade. But what really brings it all together are the relationships between the six leads and how their close friendships strain and fracture over the course of the next several days following the Beginning Of The End. The film is especially and unexpectedly sentimental in its analysis of the strained friendship between Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel, the latter of whom has, over time, become increasingly distant from his friend following the latter's move to Hollywood, and dislikes the latter's new circle of friends (Hill, in particular). Friendship has always been the one key recurring theme in much of Apatow's work, and everything related to it. It lends "This Is the End" its rare sort of emotional core apart from the raunch and anarchic end-of-the-world shock-horror.
Furthermore, is "This Is the End's" exploration of over-privileged young actors' "narcissism and spiritual bankruptcy" (again, in the words of Ann Hornaday) since as "The Rapture" drags on, the six leads are forced to examine their lives and wonder why they've been left behind and if there is any hope for redemption. From the outset, you wouldn't expect to see or hear something like this in a film like "This Is the End," much less think that Rogen and Goldberg would be capable of injecting that level of spiritual intelligence into what is essentially a simplistic, rude & crude, arm-chair Hollywood morality tale for slackers masquerading as an end-of-the-world survival-comedy (even more so considering the fact that Rogen, Baruchel, Hill and Franco are all of Jewish heritage, and speculating on the "end times" as depicted in the "Book of Revelations" in the New Testament is quite revealing). To me, it's just a little remarkable nugget planted in a film that while it is not always tonally consistent, it keeps you thoroughly on the edge of your seat as you wonder what wild, crazy direction it's going to veer toward next - making it one of the most fun, less-predictable films of its genre.
"This Is the End" is a fitting conclusion (if it really is a conclusion) to an era of hilariously raunchy, yet unexpectedly sweet-natured comedy from a collective of brilliant young Canadian (and American) comic stars. The 10 years were well worth the wait for this not-yet-jaded viewer.
8/10
P. S.: "This Is the End" concludes with the most laugh-out-loud hilarious (if more than a little unnecessary and maybe blasphemous?) dance number I've ever seen.