This is the End – painful to watch

This is the End starts off promisingly enough, and even the least subtle bit of product placement ever in the opening five minutes is forgiven due to the fact you get the feeling this might be a fun two hours. It maintains good momentum as we meet celebrities playing themselves, but then the apocalypse happens, both on camera and behind.

Playing himself Jay Baruchel (you’ll recognize him from bit parts in Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder) arrives in LA to spend the weekend with best friend Seth Rogen. Jay is wary of the glamorous LA lifestyle and Seth’s new friends, and is reluctantly dragged to a party at rival for Rogen’s friendship James Franco’s house. Every celebrity under the sun is there, from Rihanna to Emma Watson, making fun of themselves and their lifestyles in an amusing enough way, until all hell breaks loose. People ascend into the sky and holes open up in the ground all around, sucking people away. Jay, Seth, James and a few others find themselves bared up in James’s home defending themselves against the end of the world.

The problem with This is the End is the middle; the very long middle, when the group have seemingly endless conversations in the same room over and over again. It’s not as quirky or funny as it thinks it is and very quickly becomes irritating. Playing themselves is a novelty for a bit, but soon becomes dull and not a very interesting or entertaining bunch. Franco as always is great but even his performance becomes repetitive. Worst of all Jay Baruchel is just annoying and not likeable. It picks up towards the end with a bit of energy but what comes before really is painfully dull to watch.

A disaster. Some great talent given too much freedom by the studio resulting in self-indulgent repetitive nonsense. Avoid.

1 out of 5