A bit of a hit and miss film, but it's just about watchable

Rating: 6/10 (13 January 2014)

I was a little bit apprehensive about watching This Is The End as I'm not particularly a big fan of Seth Rogen. I decided to give this a shot as it has a reasonable IMDb rating and I was in the mood to watch something that would make me laugh. It succeeded in achieving its objective, but I wasn't laughing as often as I would have hoped.
Where I think this film was at its strongest was in all the scenes where the characters are sending themselves up; we have the gag about Seth Rogen playing the same guy in every single film (which both Danny McBride and Jay Baruchel both rib Seth Rogen about). We have the gag involving James Franco and him keeping all his props from all his films (including the hand held camcorder from 127 Hours). There was also the very funny parody of The Exorcist when the gang perform 'The Exorcism of Jonah Hill'. It was in scenes like these that the most enjoyment could be found and I just wish there had been more send ups like these.
In all honesty, I found some of the gags that didn't involve parody or the characters sending themselves up didn't quite work as well - there is one scene where James Franco and Danny McBride are arguing about McBride cumming all over his porn mag and then McBride saying that he had 'cum' in various parts of his house - it just wasn't particularly funny. There were other moments in the film where crude/crass jokes were used (now I've not got a problem with crudeness being used in comedy films, but it has to be funny for it to work - if it's not funny then for me it's just pointless and unnecessary). I'll say one thing though, I was glad that Michael Cera got killed off early as his character was really annoying.
What's most interesting about this film is that there is a strangely good moral - those that are good to others and commit good deeds are taken up to heaven and saved from the apocalypse. I thought that was kind of good (in a weird sort of way). Although in all honesty from what we've seen of Baruchel, Rogen & Robinson, did any of them really deserve to go to heaven? - the only one of those characters that were even close to being likable was Craig Robinson which at least explains why he was saved first.
This film was OK, but it only just falls into a watchable category. There were too many parts where the humour fell flat and the only time it really worked were the parts where the cast were sending each other up and the Exorcist parody was also pretty funny. It really deserves a 5.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 6 for IMDb).