This Is The End - 2013 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel
Director:  Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg

Note:  Minor Spoilers Ahead, Plus A Long Mini-Essay With Spoilers

How much of the Apatow/Feig type oeuvre would you have to have seen to find this film funny, I wondered?  It stars the actors who've tended to dominate comedy films over the last 5 to 10 years, playing exaggerated versions of themselves while making references to their acting resumes.  Whatever the case, the movie worked on me, and I wasn't sure it would.  What could have been a meta-film was played remarkably straight - I don't think anyone says at any point 'This is like a movie!' or something asinine like that.  Besides an extended parody to The Exorcist (spoiled in the commercials), direct allusions to other movies either weren't there or went over my head.  The laughs diminish as the plot winds down, but isn't that always the way?  Whoever manages to do the reverse in comedy will be a millionaire.

MINI ESSAY ABOUT THE MEANING OF THIS FILM VIS-A-VIS FUTURE FILMS

One thing this movie plays with is the idea that the Apatow/Feig genre seems to feature lazy characterization in general - that as bro hangout type movies, the characters aren't well defined as anything except for versions of the actor that the actor has already portrayed.  I'm not sure I believe this - I think Seth Rogen's character in Funny People is actually well-acted and quite un-Seth Rogen-y at points - but certainly there's something to this idea.

A caveat to the proceeding:  I haven't seen much of James Franco's dramatic work.  I saw Spiderman and Freaks and Geeks, but besides Pineapple Express (which I've only seen half of), I don't consider Franco under the Apatow umbrella.

This film is an apotheosis of sorts.  For one, it nicely seems to preclude other films starring these actors as themselves - I mean, obviously retconning wouldn't be out of place in this genre, but the film ends with the world in ruins.  However, it puts the image of these people 'playing themselves' into our minds.  I don't think it will take away from their future dramatic performances, whatever they may be, but I think their comedy performances may be affected.  Where can they go with characterization from here?  What kind of fake job and life can they invent for a Seth Rogen surrogate to be embodied by his amiable yet hilarious-to-anger stoner?  I guess to some degree it doesn't matter - Rogen is 31 and aging out of this genre, or so one would think.  Regardless, by playing themselves as wealthy Hollywood types, the actors do distance themselves from the audience somewhat (although one could argue that with the preponderance of TMZ-type revelations and WTF-style interviews, a certain audience is much closer to these people than they might otherwise be despite the gap in income and/or success).

However, the one thing that seems to keep these people alive comedically, as well as the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost combination, regardless of their wealth and fame, is a love of cinema.  I saw a stand-up comic's performance and everything was basically about his life as a stand-up comedian - things he saw in hotels and on planes, people he met at bars, things that happened when he went to perform somewhere.   The material was good but not 100% relatable - everything he said felt like a performance, nothing seemed all that vital.  The beauty of the bottomless chasm that is cinema's navel is that one only needs to retain one's inner fanboy to remain vital in a culture where Movies are king.  One can be rich and famous but as long as the characters one portrays on screen are still quoting movies and the films themselves are using movies as cultural currency, they work.  I think.  We'll see.