Movie Review: This Is The End

Overall

Trey: 4 out of 5

When its funny it's hilarious and the majority of the film followed that suit. However to many penis jokes and a bland middle section ultimately turn this disaster film from a great comedy to a good one.

Suzanne: 3.5 out of 5

This movie was pretty hilarious overall and I really enjoyed that fact that they did a light hearted apocalypse movie. I agree with Trey that there were far too many penis jokes (but hey if that's your thing this is the movie for you) and the middle of the movie did drag quite a bit. Other than that a great comedy if you need a good laugh.

Overview

When Jay Baruchel comes to L.A to visit his best friend Seth Rogan, Jay's plans to just chill with his friend are thrown out the window when Seth persuades him to go to a house warming party at James Franco's House. They arrive at the party where Seth meets up with some of his good friends like James, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson. Jay however doesn't get along with everyone and feels as if he is being put on the back burner by his would be best friend. When outside the apocalypse begins, whoever survives the chaos outside has to band together and figure out a plan to survive. (Sorry for the overview, that was one of the most difficult overviews I have ever had to write. I didn't want to give away anything but the bare minimum.)


Visuals

Trey: Though much of the film takes place within Franco's house there is a bit of special effects spread throughout the film. When there was some monsters and the wreckage outside for the budget I thought it did rather well. This isn't a blockbuster film but the simple use of the CGI was good enough.

Suzanne: I thought the visual effects were pretty good for this not being a huge movie. They spent a majority of the movie inside which was fine but I wanted them to be outside in the wreckage a little more than they were.

Audio and Score

Trey: nothing to really talk about in this section, however there was some nice musical touches. In particular a perfectly timed and hilarious use of a famous Whitney Houston song, and even the Backstreet Boys. Yeah I said it.

Suzanne: I didn't notice a ton of music in the movie overall but when I did it worked perfectly. They used it for comedy and it was quite amazing and made the movie that much better.

Acting

Trey: When you have people playing the exaggerated versions of their real life selves, the expectations for the acting isn't very high. I believe you will be impressed with whatever characters you end up liking. An example would be I have never been a fan of Seth Rogan and Jay Baruchel, and they were the characters I didn't enjoy (Along with Franco). However I loved the performances of Craig Robinson and Jonah Hill, I found them to be the funniest and just overall the most enjoyable. Also I would like to point out the extremely hilarious cameo performance from Michael Cera. I believe it's exactly what he isn't like in real life, but it made me laugh a lot.

Suzanne: I thought that everyone did really well with their end of the world performances. I loved when they showed all of the celebrities at James Franco's party because they each had their own little quirky comedic part and it was great. I really enjoyed the comedic interaction between all of the main characters, Rogan, Franco, Robinson, Hill and Baruchel. I thought everyone was very funny and that really made the movie what it is. And finally I have to give a shout out to Michael Cera for giving a hilarious cameo in the movie that was really different than what we usually see from him.

Story

Trey: I found the story to be most impressive, and much different than what I was expecting. There was some gags (penis ones) that fell flat for me, and they kept adding more and more as the film went on. The best part about the story it added a twist I wasn't expecting, and for every bland scene I was confident they would come back and make me laugh soon, which they usually succeeded at. Mad props to Rogan and Goldberg for writing a funny bromance adventure. The film started out immensely strong, then started to fault in the middle, but redeemed itself in the final 15 minutes of the film.

Suzanne: I thought the story actually came together really well. I wasn't sure going into the movie that it would work very well but it truly did. The only part of the story that I really didn't enjoy was all of the penis jokes, I thought they really over did it with those. I thought that they spent a little too much time in the house but in the end it did work so I can't really complain. Overall the movie's story was really great and really funny.