Film Review: This Is The End

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, co-writers of Superbad and Pineapple Express, have done, and now poke merciless fun at the decimation of the US west coast in the raucous comedy This Is The End, in which the current crop of cinema’s bright young things play exaggerated versions of themselves.

In the film’s opening segment, Rogen shuffles embarrassed through an airport as someone asks, “You play the same guy in every movie. When are you going to do some real acting?” And at a heaving house party, Michael Cera of Juno fame is exposed as a drug-snorting, chauvinist oaf, who accepts sexual favours from fans and rudely slaps Rihanna’s behind.

There are undeniably hilarious moments in the ramshackle script including the appearance of a sinkhole that claims the lives of virtually the entire cast. However, there’s a surfeit of ideas without clear direction, the tone lurches awkwardly from comedy to special-effects laden mayhem and the final reckoning arrives 15 minutes too late.