This Is The End

I can vividly imagine being a 20 or 30 something actor, living in Hollywood, who is quite successful in comedic roles, sitting around having a beer with a few other such people in the room and saying "You know what we should do? We should make a movie about being ourselves and totally take the piss out of ourselves, acting completely over the top and playing on all of our public persona's. And we should have monsters in it, and gore, and Emma Watson, and the whole world should be blowing up, and we can use CGI and we would totally make millions of dollars doing that." In fact, I can imagine that this type of conversation has happened repeatedly over the last 20 years or so with people like Sean William Scott, Seth Green, Mike Myers, Will Smith, Pauly Shore, Stephen Baldwin, Elijah Wood and many others. However, it took Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Franco, Jonah Hill (from Moneyball) and a bunch of other funny guys to make it into a reality, and boy-oh-boy am I happy the world had to wait for them to be the ones.

I have honestly not laughed so consistently in a film for what feels like ages. Every 5 minutes I was pissing myself laughing with the dry smart arse humour of Jonah Hill, or cracking up at Danny McBride being Danny McBridge, or almost faling off my chair at a coke'd up Michael Cera acting like an absolute knob! The way Seth and Evan thought about each character with respect to the real life representation of each actor, and designed such amusing and fitting character traits for them, really hits home and every single one of them is done to perfection.

The film isn't a masterpiece in story telling, but its so chock full of little amusing things that you don't care. Instead of going for that dumbed down, in-your-face stupidity type comedy of the Scary Move franchise, this film uses detail and genuine warmth to make things funny. Things like a huge diamond earring in Jonah Hill's ear. A towel on Craig Robinsons shoulder for the whole film that simply says "Mr Robinson". The fact that James Franco had paintings commissioned that just say "James Franco" and "Seth Rogan" to introduce how 'Hollywoodised" Seth has become to his friend Jay. These things are clever and funny and well thought out and are but three in a film of millions.

I honestly love this film, and cannot wait to watch it again. I know I missed many hidden treats in the background and can so imagine the main cast all standing around in a room saying things like "I reckon in this take you should reference my earring", "I reckon in this take we should work in Scarface somehow", "I reckon in this part we should get Emma Watson to de-head a giant penis statue with an axe!" and I can just imagine every single one of them pissing themselves with laughter as they thought about it, then setting up the cameras and shooting it. It really comes across that these guys had a blast putting this movie together and it really makes you as an audience member happy that you got to be a part of it. It kind of feels like, for a little while, you get to be a 20 or 30 something successfull actor in Hollywood, hanging out with your friends at the end of the world.

SCORE: 8/10

IMDB Info for This Is The End