Why, why, why did I go and see this movie?
It was Friday night, date night, and time for a quick dinner and a movie, to get away. We blindly chose This is the End because it was the highest rated movie on the Tomatometer with 85%. How can you go wrong?
It is seldom that I sit down in a movie theater, paying movie theater prices, without knowing at least what the movie is about, or having read some reviews.
Not this time.
I had no idea what I was going into. And now, a day later, writing about it, I am still not sure what I think about This is the End. I can’t figure out what to do with this movie.
A bunch of Hollywood actors go to a party at the new castle-like house of one of their Hollywood actor friends. Loud music, weed smoking, blowjobs in the bathroom with the door open, excess drinking and inane conversation abound. Then something happens. At first it seems like a huge earthquake, but they quickly realize it’s much more than that. Within minutes Los Angeles is destroyed and the city looks like an apocalyptic nightmare. Thick smoke covers a dark sky, fires burning everywhere, marauding bands of people threaten each other, and inexplicable demons made out of lava, I guess, attack survivors.
Six friends are holed up in the ruins of the party house, after all the remaining guests have either left, fallen into sink holes and lava tubes, been eaten by monsters or other wise disappeared. They take inventory of the little food and water they have left and start thinking about survival.
It’s basically a dumb story, with no real plot or point, other than give reason for the actors to bare their souls, make dumb jokes and act grotesquely.
The actors all play themselves. I have never seen a cast list quite like this one:
Seth Rogen plays Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill plays Johah Hill. You get the idea. I have seen some of the others, but I am not good with actors’ names these days, so I didn’t really know them.
Strange shit happens. One guy gets decapitated, his head rolls on the floor, and they all freak out and start kicking the head like a soccer ball, trying to get it away from themselves. Grossly, the camera view is from the still working eyes of the decapitated guy. Yuck.
Another guy gets screwed by an incubus – a horned lava demon – and the next day he wakes up possessed. There are at least a hundred scenes of grossness of all imaginable flavors. Perhaps the actors are trying to make self-deprecating fun of themselves for their own previous bad movies?
This is a comedy and a spoof of Hollywood, its actors and its lifestyle, mixed with Christian parody, a little Satanism, and a whole lot of nonsense.
I laughed, sometimes because I was embarrassed, and all the while I kept wondering where this whole movie was going.
Mind you, it didn’t go anywhere. It just kept getting bader and bader.
Rating: ** – but only because it’s so weird, so grotesque a movie, you almost have to go see it so you can decide for yourself.