This Is the End

Directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

(R)

***

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Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have made the “snort-out-loud funniest” comedy in years, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Playing mildly altered versions of themselves, Hollywood funnymen Rogen, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, and Jay Baruchel are enjoying a big party at James Franco’s gorgeous home when the apocalypse hits and the earth starts swallowing people whole. As the pals assess their new circumstances, the filmmakers do something “incredibly sly”: They treat the crisis outside quite seriously. Scattered gags that reference horror-film classics occasionally produce the feel of a generic spoof, said Justin Chang in Variety. But “the actors’ sense of fun is infectious,” and the screenplay’s “forays into outlandish supernatural territory” create a “spiky comic energy.” At one point, the “eagerly self-effacing ensemble” participates in a masturbation scene that “threatens to serve as an entirely too-apt metaphor for the film itself,” said William Goss in Film.com. Fortunately, the actors’ credible chemistry holds our attention all the way to a “gleefully random” final reveal.