This Is The End film review from West Coast Midnight Run

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THIS IS THE END
Columbia Pictures
MPAA Rating R

Running Time: 1 hr. 59 min.

Score: B-

Starring: James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Emma Watson, Rihanna, and Jonah Hill

Directed by: Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen

By Peter Maertin

The end of the world is about to hit the Hollywood scene ... and the entire world. A group of highly wired actors and celebrities are unaware of what is about to take place as they plan a party for their friends in Los Angeles.

Original source photo © Bruce Rolff

This is The End could have been a really interesting comedy film, given the most recent string of sci-fi adventures that have poured out of Hollywood depicting one totaled metropolis after another, from the Avengers, Man of Steel and 2012 to this year’s Oblivion.

Audiences going to see this movie expecting a send up of Cloverfield, a low budget and extremely well made film on the end of the world might be disappointed, since it certainly feels this way from the sneak peeks.

Instead this movie is a Second City, SNL type of goofs and pranks from a

team of comedy actors playing a caricature of themselves that are faced with the end of the world, not a natural disaster, but rather a biblical end of the world with spirits and demons out to take you out and prevent you from enjoying the rapture.

The movie is not just R-rated it is filled with off-color jokes and humor on every cliche situation you could expect Hollywood stars to be caught in, or indulging themselves with, from drugs and sex to bad karma, self perception, self parody and self idolization.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are the the co-creators and co-directors of this

adventure and this is not their first foray into this genre as many of their fans will attest to the Superbad fun ride with this team.

Rather than play off a more frightening situation such as Cloverfield, This is The End plays a safer romp with a knock off religious themes.

The humor kicks up a notch and gains a measure of surreal as the end of the world becomes obvious, however some of the more memorable scenes could be with the actors taking swipes at each other and themselves before all hell breaks loose and the world of the undead joins the living.

And viewers beware, this movie is no Ghost Busters, which spawned two more sequels and could use a reboot if we have this many comedy stars in need of a vehicle.

If you are squeamish at sex jokes, masturbation and other scatological parodies you may not find this film as hysterically amusing as some audiences certainly do, much less so if you spent some of your late night hours watching the now departed Late Night with Conan, Howie Mandell on Leno's show and Howard Stern.

Interestingly enough there is an overabundance of male comedians

and very few females in this romp, despite the obvious charms presented by the casting of Rihanna and Emma Watson as representative of the latest female heroes of the youngest generations in Tinsle Town.

And a critic would have thought it could have been interesting if the situation was an even number of female and male comedians equally taking swipes at Hollywood fame, the war of the sexes and sexual inadequacy,

Alas even in the face of a growing trend for the most recent decades in which movies tooted the turning of the tables with the male/female societal roles, the

end of the world is not a catchy opportunity for a comedy to dig into this issue Rogen and Goldberg style and instead skips over golden mines while busy wreaking havoc over social mores, dogma and Hollywood hipsterism and cool.

A very nice film that could have been even stronger and possibly a classic, but that could be the next adventure.