An Amusing Diversion

Rating: 5/10 (10 October 2013)

This Is The End was amusing and worth watching. It was funny, ridiculous and a show of utter self-indulgence, while maintaining full awareness of its utter self-indulgence (that was kind of the point of the movie). That said, don't go looking to come out of watching it with greater insight into humanity, Hollywood or anything else.
If one unburdens oneself from the need to take anything meaningful away from the movie and simply watches to enjoy these actors bantering because they lack of anything better to do as the end times rain down – then you'll find it, as I did, a mindlessly hilarious comedy that was perfect for a summer evening with friends when thinking wasn't really the goal of the night. The beginning was really hilarious, the middle bits were amusing but dragged on a bit, and the conclusion was pretty damn funny too, if pointlessly over the top.
Some said it was a little too scary for a comedy, but hey, at least these elements served to move a plot that went somewhere unlike many of its rivals in the mindless category that are truly horrifying, pointless, over budgeted, ungrounded and plainly inept (i.e. Breaking Dawn Part 2).
The film was about bad people, and it takes literally the end of the world for them to own up to it – a clichéd sentiment when talking about Hollywood, but expressed in such an amusingly direct manner as to make this film fun. You better already like the cast and have seen some of their other work, otherwise you'll probably find the movie pretty flat and needlessly ridiculous.
I loved the references to their other movies (like Fanco having the camera from 127 Hours), the bromance and watching these guys play caricatures of themselves pointlessly searching for redemption. I never 'lost myself' in it as I watched, and I think that makes the movie fit nicely into the "something to put on when you're having a few friends over and nobody is really paying all that much attention to the movie anyway" category. Really, I think that was probably part of the message of the movie – quit paying so much attention to these people and quit judging them for their outrageous lives, they're all damned anyway. Instead, just enjoy what they are offering here, mindless hilarity that still dwarfs so many of the mindless movies that claim to offer something serious.