Worth watching at least once.

Rating: 7/10 (20 September 2013)

This Is the End begins like most of its stoner/sex/gross-out comedy cousins. (You can read our take on Superbad or Pineapple Express for a quick reference.) Only in this case a gaggle of a-list Hollywood comedians and recognizable entertainment pretty people—from James Franco and Seth Rogen to Emma Watson and Rihanna—all play "themselves" as they wallow in booze, drugs and casual-cool sleaze.
About 10 or 15 minutes in, though, this seemingly formulaic foul flick gets twisted: The ground starts shaking and splitting open, cars crash, people scream, fires rage and the party's Hollywood locale is quickly transformed into a netherworld of rancid smoke, demonic beasts and open sinkholes to hell.
It's a surprise genre blending that springs from a 2007 short called Jay and Seth vs. The Apocalypse. Never heard of it? Well, that's because it never saw the light of day beyond a rough-edged YouTube trailer. But that was not the end, as we now can clearly see.
The special-effects-laden end result of turning that short into a feature is  unique, with "Is there a God?" ruminations and the supernatural rapture of believers getting mangled and mashed up with graphic nudity, lengthy arguments about masturbation and ejaculation, drugged-out binges and rapid-fire f-bombs.
A postscript: The Los Angeles Times is reporting that directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were actually expecting an initial NC-17 rating for this movie. And that they "didn't just expect their raunchy Judgment Day comedy to be slapped with an NC-17 rating—they secretly planned on receiving the adults-only rating.  Acting on the advice of distributor Sony Pictures, Rogen and Goldberg intentionally larded the film with a few sexually explicit frames that they felt certain would shock the movie ratings panel and result in an NC-17 mark." Then they were reportedly planning to snip out a few of the most offensive segments and re-submit for a more marketable R, raking in free publicity along the way. But the result was an R rating right out of the gate, with no edits required.
According to the Times, "The decision stunned Rogen and Goldberg. 'All the ratings stuff doesn't make sense in the first place, but this is like ludicrous,' Goldberg said. Added Rogen: 'We actually made it even a little worse than we wanted and that version got approved. Insanely, we didn't have a ratings issue.'"