Review: This Is The End (spoiler-free)
Making a good Rat Pack movie is really, really hard.
One of the packs in Hollywood these days is The Apatow Gang, emerging from movies like Superbad, Pineapple Express, and Apatow’s personal films, The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People and This Is 40. Even within most of those films, there were pack sequences, though none of the movies were really Pack movies. (Other packs include Clooney/Soderbergh, Sandler, Ferrell, Stiller, Team Seattle, Team Austin… all with lots of overlapping.)
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg emerged as writers with their semi-autobiographical comedy, Superbad. Rogen also built a career as an actor, launched by Apatow and Paul Feig’s “Freaks & Geeks.”
With This Is The End, Rogen & Goldberg take the leap into directing with their version of a Pack film. The film is built on the public personas of its actors, real or imagined. This is a step away from Pack films like Tropic Thunder, Grown Ups or even one non-pack movie that evolved into a Pack favorite, Anchorman. But, surprisingly, Goldberg & Rogen are completely up to the task.
For me, the film plays as an apology for or correction of The Watch, a terrible Pack movie for which they share writing credit. Not only is the material similar, but it’s almost as though they took everything that went wrong on The Watch and pointedly fixed each issue. Too meandering? Tighten it up. Effects kinda sucked? Do great effects. Pack stars seem to riff and wander? Define each character (in this case, each playing themselves) clearly and don’t allow them to play too much… story stays first.
I don’t want to spoil anything, though it’s really not a spoiler movie. But the question of what is actually happening is an issue throughout the movie and you should see it and have the experience of wondering. And there are 20+ gags that people will quote back to one another, none of which will cease to be funny if you know they”re coming, but which can’t really be done justice to in a movie review.
What really makes the movie fly is the choices that Goldberg & Rogen and all the stars made/agreed to play through the film. People love Danny McBride, but aside from “Eastbound & Down,” his characters have been a little boxed in and don’t feel like we are getting the full subtext of this guy’s schtick. Here, he finally feels fully free. James Franco gets to do both the thing people have come to expect and offer a new shade. Jonah Hill does great, basically bitch-slapping himself through the whole film.
I don’t want to keep listing actors because part of the fun is figuring out who is in the film a lot and who isn’t. But what is so good about the film is that it all balances out in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a Pack movie. There is a near-perfect balance of vanity and respecting the story.
More than anything, Rogen & Goldberg know how to keep things moving so nothing becomes too precious. As directors, they are like the best bartenders you can find. All they really want to do is to get you blind, raging drunk—happy drunk—on the comedy. But they understand how to balance what they serve so that no one throws up and no one gets maudlin or angry. The audience just has a great buzz for 107 minutes.
And I honestly think this should have been at Cannes, because it is truly a movie about movies. Not only are real-life celebrity actors playing with perception, but the movie plays with movie cliches and genre, and the borders of acceptable behavior on film, and many specific homages to other films (calling Billy Friedkin!).
I didn’t expect it, but this is a comedy that gave me that feeling I had when I first saw 40-Year-Old Virgin or Beverly Hills Cop or great Mel Brooks… even bordering on Albert Brooks (a standard in comedy insight, skill, and explosive subtlety that is rarely touched). It is daring, assured, and never has you waiting for one gag to be over so you can get to the next one (aka feeling like a cartoon written at a roundtable with writers or actors selling gags, not story movement that happens to be funny). Not every one (or everyone) is comedy gold, but enough are and the pace is so strong that you just swim with the tide the entire way, right to the ending that has no business being as fun as it is.
I could still be high on the pleasure of this film. I don’t want to ruin it by overhyping it. But it was a singular, joyous, surprising pleasure for me. And I hope it will be again and again.
I look forward to the “Spoiler-ific” thread for this one. Until then: Yeah, it’s hilarious. And smart, very smart.
I’ve only seen the commercials and the sausage filled billboards so I always wonder, what happened to the women? Was this the second coming and all the men were left behind?
I do see that Emma Watson in DP’s photo though.
If I were going to offer one suggestion for an improvement, Alex, it would be more of a female presence. But in this boy’s club situation, might be hard to do it and remain true to the underlying idea.
So looking forward to this movie. It’s funny, with all the big budget stuff out there, the three films im really hyped for are This is the End, the World’s End, and Kick Ass 2.
Intriguing. I enjoyed it, but nowhere near this much. I think I need to see it again.
Well, thank God. I was afraid it would just be 107 minutes of untalented people repeatedly saying shit, fuck, pussy and cocksucker while frequently sustaining groin injuries before dying in bloody, horrible manners. Oh, wait…
Groin. Heh-heh. “Groin.”
Yes it’s easily as good as Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles.
I’m sure fans and historians will still be talking about how it still is a comedic highpoint 50 years later.
Must be tough for these model fucking millionaire yucksters to be so brutally self-deprecating. Huge kudos to them for slyly mocking their personas with such a raw device, ie a major summer studio comedy. The thought of this self-referential circle jerk amongst the comedy-entitled makes my skin crawl. The hollywood snake just ate its tail and is now vomiting up its next meal.
Hey SNL, the toilet doors been left open for you. time to start dumping.
Er, Jeffrey: Just curious. Have you actually seen the movie yet?
I’m curious as to how Watson fares surrounded by sexist scoundrels! (channeling Katherine Heigl and Anne Hathaway) Or if her appearance is just a device cameo? Her future career kind of rides on that weekend (Bling Ring drops same day and Darren Aronofsky’s flick seems like a terrifying prospect to even wrap my head around).
Hermione holds her moment.
Good to hear. Out of curiosity, for the sake of Radcliffe, Grint and Watson, because it happens over and over on every site, with “Perks of Being a Wallflower” also… (I realize it’s an internal joke here) how long did it take critics to transition from referring to Christopher Lee as “Dracula?” I’m actually not sure this move helps her move past what’s already, clearly, become a running joke that Radcliffe and Grint will likely never escape, though Radliffe playing Ginsberg will test that.
The decent “Hermione” joke gets thrown away in the red band trailer.
Etguild: For years, Michael Caine was Alfie, Sean Connery was James Bond, Anthony Perkins was Norman Bates… You either outlive that first major role, or you don’t.
Joe, Luise Rainer could never live down THE GOOD EARTH.
And I always thought the only reason she got that role was from GREAT ZIEGFELD.
Joe, very true, but it becomes different when it’s a woman due to Hollywood history. And it becomes different when it’s a child that initiated the part, as we can see with Lindsay Lohan, the Olsens, Corey Feldman. Sigourney Weaver was never “Ripley” very much…she was Jane Goodall in between, and she handled it, but she was an adult woman. Maybe this is actually progress? I’m not sure.
Watson’s got her FU money, so she can do whatever she wants for the rest of her life. I’m sure being referred to as “Hermione” is the least of her worries.
I’ll be surprised if Emma Watson doesn’t become a huge, huge movie star. That still of her curling her tongue on the dance floor in Bling Ring is the sexiest publicity photo I think I’ve ever seen.
Two questions – one, I know I’ll feel dumb when someone answers, but I’m drawing a blank right now on who the “Seatlle” pack is. And two, I’m confused by why you call Anchorman a non-pack movie. Adam McKay and Will Ferrell…I thought you said that was a pack?
I saw a red band tv spot for this, still didn’t make it look very funny, but where the hell do you play a red-band television spot?
There’s a reason this is the worst written, most cluttered, and worst designed movie site extant. The guy who owns it can’t write, and he is desperately in need of a proofreader — often.
Let’s begin and end with this sentence by David Poland: “What really makes the movie fly is the choices that Goldberg & Rogen and all the stars made/agreed to play through the film.”
Look, Mr. Poland, you’re supposed to be an adult. Learn to write. Why should we believe anything you say if you’re verb tenses are that of an elementary school student?
The sentence should be: What really makes the movie fly are the choices that Goldberg & Rogen and all the stars made/agreed to play through the film.
If you don’t see the mistake, then this already overrated and one-joke of a movie may be for you.
“you’re verb tenses”
You tell him Nathan G!
The Rolling Stone puff piece on this was nauseating. “How often do you bros fart and jack off?” Modern journalism.
Just saw this. It’s not very funny.