

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, writers of Superbad, Pineapple Express and, er, The Green Hornet, have made the funniest, most audacious comedy of the year so far in This Is The End.

A bizarre blend of horror, stoner comedy, mockumentary and existentialist examination (yep), This Is The End begins with a character named Seth (Rogen) picking up his best friend Jay (Jay Baruchel) from the airport. Reporters take pictures of Seth and ask him to do the Seth Rogen laugh, which he does. Nobody really knows Jay as anything more than one of the guys from Knocked Up.

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All of this is true both in real life and in the context of the movie, where Rogen, Baruchel and a horde of other celebrities play exaggerated versions of themselves while at a party at James Franco's mansion. Rogen's pointed out in interviews that they either wanted to have the celebrities play really close to how we perceive them -- or the complete opposite.

So on one hand, you have an overly-pretentious Franco giving a speech about the value of art and Danny McBride acting very Danny McBride-y.

On the other, you have Jonah Hill playing, as Rogen calls him, "the nicest guy in the world" and Michael Cera stumbling around looking for coke and slapping pop star booties.


The party, which lasts about 20 minutes and could have been entertaining for another hour, features about 20 noticeable celebrities just hanging out, riffing about each other's awful movies and talking about who they're lusting after (Mindy Kaling obviously does this the best). It's more fun not to mention who's there, but Cera alone is worth the price of admission.

Jay (in the movie at least) feels left out as he doesn't really get along with Seth's "new friends" and had thought they'd just be spending the weekend getting high and playing video games (celebrities are just like us!).

And then ... crazy stuff goes down. Before we know it, Rogen, Baruchel, McBride, Hill, Franco and Craig Robinson have barricaded themselves inside Franco's house. Oh, and McBride, who hadn't even been invited to the party, ate most of the food.

The film then shifts to become a claustrophobic comedy of horrors with the players arguing about trivial things like who gets access to Franco's porno mags and deeper things like how they should deal with the apocalyptic destruction that awaits right outside the door (some of these gags go on a tiny bit too long; overlength is the movie's only issue).

And at the center of it all is Jay and Seth's friendship, which makes it an actual movie instead of just a string of jokes.

With the film's outrageous humor and the way its subjects poke humor at themselves the entire time, you'll never want This Is the End to, well, end.

Grade: A-


Follow Pete McQuaid on Twitter @sweetestpete.