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Created Jun 16, 2013 07:43PM PST • Edited Dec 10, 2019 02:47AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   This Is The End is the demented love child of Superbad, Pineapple Express, Cloverfield and Left Behind. Yes, that’s four parents. Who’s judging. Slyly self-referential, super sick and sock-it-to-me funny, it simply slays – comedically speaking. Roughly 40% LOL, the intervening 60% gets spent recovering from the last laugh, teeing up the next one or reeling from how wildly inappropriate the current bit is.

   Making it more fun at the theater, different people in the audience LOL at different things, so you end up with a laugh riot version of The Wave. My audience at the Century 22 big dome was in rolling stitches.

   The movie can also be thought of as the ultimate revenge of disaffected Jewish comedians. The only core cast member who’s not at least half-Semitic is Craig Robinson. Hey, wait? Nah, couldn’t be.

   Their comedy is one big stick in the eye to the Left Behind constituency, delivered through a Superbad ethos and elevated by plenty of Pineapple Express. Situating the apocalypse amidst a happening partay gives it a Cloverfield vibe that resonates deeply with today’s self-absorbed hipsters.

   This is the end? Nope, this is one super funny movie for those of us jaded enough to enjoy the humor.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   The movie’s conceit is that the cast play apparent versions of themselves, perhaps accurate, perhaps not. Celebrity obsessed as we are in this 2nd Millennium, the assemblage of A, B and C-listers is a wonder to behold. The core group includes an extended Pineapple Express crew of James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson.

   Franco comes across as an insincere guy who thinks he’s sincere. Hill “plays” a semi-latent homosexual who uses passive-agressive tactics to probe a bunch of straights; Rogen an amiable good-timer; Baruchel a kvetchy twit; McBride an off-the-hook asshole; and Robinson a coddled celebrity. Real? Who cares.

   Rihanna and Emma Watson are the two A-list babes in the cast. Yes, the Rihanna and the Hermione. Rihanna even sings a verse of an obscene song back to Craig Robinson. Watson “proves” that she’s as tough in fictional real-life as she was in the Harry Potter movies.

   Michael Cera plays against type as a coke-snorting, groupie-scooping, celebrity monster.

   The rest of the cast appear in cameos, proving that our appetite for celebrity sightings is insatiable, as is the need for fresh meat in a disaster movie. The list of willing victims includes Mindy Kaling, David Krumholtz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Martin Starr, Paul Rudd, Channing Tatum, Kevin Hart and Aziz Ansari. To Hell with them all!

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    This Is The End is a big budget FX pic as much as a comedy. To that end, Seth Rogen and his behind-the-camera alter ego Evan Goldberg deliver not just a very funny film, but an accomplished production on a massive scale. Bully for them.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Really Great 4.5

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Horrid 4.0

    Horrid indeed. Ladies and gentlemen, stay away unless you’re ready to get in touch with your inner cretin, your secret smut slut, your Jonesing comedy-junky self.

    Given that it’s a Hard-R comedy, sexual humor makes up many of the bits. Yet since most of the movie is filled with just guys, latent gay humor comes well out of the closet. Fortunately it’s mostly all funny.

    Not that women are in the clear, not when one of the dudes wears a shirt that reads “Take Yo Panties Off”, and then leads a coed party in singing a ditty of that title.

    It’s not women or heterosexual mores that are most disrespected however. It’s religion, Christianity especially. Want Exhibit A proving Hollywood’s post-religious worldview? This Is The End is it.

17. Sex Titillating 2.4

18. Violence Monstrous 4.6

19. Rudeness Vile 4.9

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.9

    What we have here is a couple of Hebrew School delinquents making sport of the Book of Revelations, that perennial punching-bag of acerbic atheists. As a Hebrew School graduate myself, I get the humor, just not the obsession.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.7

23. Biological Fantasy 5.0

24. Physical Supernatural 4.0