A-Enlightenment does not arrive upon request. Nor does it ever seem to visit for as long as one's mother does. And perhaps even more baffling still is the inability to predict the source of our next moment of enlightenment.
As a self-branded "film snob," I frequently anticipate, yearn for, and even predict enlightenment from the earliest possible stages when engaging with films. Search my blog and you will find few zero-star movies. Oh, they're out there. It's just that I anticipate what I'll hate and then avoid it completely. When I'm making my annual year-end best and worst lists, what qualifies as "worst" is often the film that disappointed me the most, rather than any genuine steaming turd of cinema. I go to movies to be moved by them.
In spite of my snobbery, I make valiant attempts to explore the film choices of the common man with regularity, though always stopping short of watching the People's Choice Awards, because the people don't know squat. And yet it was with some trepidation when a dear friend of mine encouraged me - no, make that stalked, badgered and accosted me - into seeing "This Is The End." It's got James Franco in it! Seth Rogen directed it! Its plot is a largely improvised, self-reflexive meditation on celebrity! These were but a few of the film's alleged appeals.
But nothing gelled with my current state of being. Then on the cusp of 40 (I've since hit that mark in the weeks between seeing the film and finally writing this review), I wasn't interested in a mostly improved film. I'm a writer and I value good writing. (Never mind that I'm also an actor who values good improv.) Nor did I give a damn about James Franco, Seth Rogen, or any of their cronies, all men who suffer from colossal cases of arrested development and squander their genuine, young talents through their perpetual public engagement with cannabis and prurient senses of humor. And the actors play themselves? How is that supposed to attract a guy like me... one who revels in the transcendence of a sublime character acting performance? True, I did exhibit a moment of weakness while enjoying Neil Patrick Harris in "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle," and in retrospect, that performance was probably the prototype for the characters-but-not-exactly-characters in this film. But I digress...
Regardless, I went. I went because my friend had seen the film already and had promised me that I would like it. She even paid for my ticket. She bought it in advance online to provide herself with the trump card of guilt, should I try to back out. And so I went to see "This Is The End," the kind of movie that I tend to avoid like bathroom door handles at truck stops. And I'm still a little bit shocked by what happened to me.
I found enlightenment.
There, I said it. I'm 40 now, the age where - I'm told - you start caring less and less about what other people think. I laughed and laughed - so hard, in fact, that my friend and I nearly resorted to physical abuse upon each other, no logical physical outlet remaining beyond our spasming diaphragms and gasps for air. I laughed because I was shocked, of course. But I also laughed because there were as many moments of clever in the movie as there were moments of shock. Even when the film went off the rails of good taste, I found myself laughing, and let me say that this film was more or a tetherball to taste then it was on the rails of taste, so frequently did it jump that track. So how did I react to the now infamous scene where James Franco and Danny McBride have a nearly five-minute-long argument over the etiquette of masturbating on a friend's property and with his literature? I laughed harder still.
And that's not even the enlightening part, though it contains a component of it.
Maybe I should back up here, though there's little in the way of plot summary to mention, and I also feel that the less you walk in expecting, the more engaged you'll be in the film. The movie's loose structure of a story is that Seth Rogen (all actors here are, again, playing versions of themselves) picks up his friend Jay Baruchel from the airport for some quality bro chill time and Baruchel is disappointed that his proposal for videogames and weed is dismissed for a huge Hollywood party hosted by Rogen's "other friend," James Franco. Baruchel is not pleased, as he believes Franco to be a pompous, disingenuous and condescending ass. And not so secretly, he appears hurt that he will no longer have all of Rogen's attention.
Franco's party is filled with celebrities including fellow Hollywood stoner Jonah Hill, and I don't want to give away too many more names because discovering the party guests was one of the film's charms in its opening minutes. It doesn't matter anyway, though, because the party is disrupted by an earthquake. Or an alien invasion. Or an inexplicable, unidentifiable supernatural experience so specific and awesome in power that it could only be...The Rapture?
The first sign of a potentially divine catastrophe is one of the film's most clever conceits, the almost instant decimation of Hollywood's elite, all slack-jawed and ground-bound as not a one of them is offered a tractor beam to Jesus. Rogen, in a state of semi-stoned that seems to be his persona de rigueur, isn't sure what just happened and perhaps feels that his altered state has imagined it. It's Baruchel who first explores the possibility of the end of the world and attempts to convince the few remaining partygoers of their need to do good works and repent, stat.
The bulk of the film focuses on Rogen, Baruchel, Franco, Hill, McBride and Craig Robinson attempting to navigate post-apocalyptic survival under self-imposed quarantining, with occasional reconnaissance missions outside of Franco's house. As their nerves wear more thin and their personalities increasingly clash, the boy-men begin to sell each other out, their cabin fever erupting in a variety of hilarious interpersonal wars of wit. Meanwhile, outside, a preponderance of evidence that this threat is indeed apocalyptic amasses, and I am not going to be the one to spoil some of the more outrageous moments involved therein, though I will tease by saying that the film has moments of emerging as a live-action "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut."
It's important for me to note that I have little to no patience for weed culture and the personalities that surround it, and so going in, I sat in judgment of what I'd experience. I say this because if I can emerge from "This Is The End" as such a fan of the film given my prejudices, maybe others can, too. And I think it's because labeling this movie as a "stoner movie" is too simple. And, quite frankly, it's simply unfair.
So this is where that enlightenment thing comes in. "This Is The End" provided me with two levels of enlightenment actually, both in terms of the viewing experience and the film's content itself.
In terms of the viewing experience, I was reminded that genius can sometimes coexist with the profane, and that snobbery can sometimes be the shackles that prevent us from being fully present in our lives. I felt good while watching "This Is The End." Yes, I was disgusted at times, merely shocked at others. I also winced and shook my head at things that others found funny that were just too far over my line. But I was alive during that movie, not just a breathing body in a seat decoding entertainment data. Everything I felt, I felt to an extreme. It was, in short, that true roller coaster experience that so many people go to thrilling movies to experience, the kind of popcorn-movie thrill that I so frequently eschew for academic nerd-outs.
What might surprise you more about "This Is The End" is that the movie itself, cloaked in fountains of profanity, graphic word play and substance abusing ridiculousness, is perhaps the most spiritual movie I've seen in a year, and possibly longer. It's a movie that would so terribly shock the far Christian right within five minutes that no clean-living Lord lover would make it through to the center of the film's Tootsie pop, which is nothing less than the very primal discussion of heaven and hell and the perceived requirements of the quality of one's character in order to experience a positive outcome in the wake of the end of days.
I have always believed in God, and in my understanding of the scripture that to each of us is given different spiritual gifts, I've come to realize that mine might just be that belief itself, which has not wavered through profound loss and the senselessness of our times. As a kid, I was required to memorize Ephesians 2: 8-9, which states that we are saved by grace through faith, and that this is a gift from God and nothing we can do on earth in terms of good works can buy that gift. To watch a small handful of admired Hollywood actors - who seem to have lives we all envy - grapple with the potential reality of impending eternal damnation and wonder what they can possibly do to repent before time runs out, was not only a delicious bit of irony but also a reaffirmation of my spiritual beliefs.
Don't get me wrong. "This Is The End" is not perfect. It's running time is about 30 minutes too long, clear evidence of the self-indulgence of a newbie director laughing too hard at his own inside jokes with his buddies. And the jazzy improvs send the film in almost unsustainable situations from time to time.
But then here I am again, nitpicking at a movie because it's not "my usual thing." So since the power of 40 compels me (and in that phrase lies an inside joke for those who have seen the film, in one of its greatest dialogue exchanges), I have to step up to the plate, not care what anyone thinks, and tell the truth. "This Is The End" is possibly the best comedy of 2013 so far, and my favorite film of the summer.
Oh, and did I mention that Michael Cera gives an Oscar-worthy performance?
