Grazing: THIS IS THE END

I experienced apocalyptic themes twice this week, first with Seth Rogan’s hilarious – what would it be like to experience the end of the world with all my famous friends movie This Is the End, and the next night, with the new gorgeous superMan of Steel, fighting his own race to save ours. My perfect last days scenario would be a combination of both movies – to hole up in a Hollywood mansion with Henry Cavill and hope not to ascend to heaven before he can bring me there himself – in any way he wants to!

But lets get back to This Is the End. I can’t begin to get across all the crazy, absolute stupid, comic genius that happens in this movie! Believe it or not, I still haven’t seen Superbad, hated Knock Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin and never heard of Pineapple Express, so I expected to be mildly entertained at best, not cackling throughout. The true funny comes from the fact that everyone at the James Franco house warming party is famous and playing highly exaggerated versions of themselves. If they had taken the same premise of 6 guys surviving in a house while the apocalypse rages on outside and these same actors where just playing characters, it wouldn’t deliver the same punch. But seeing celebrities like Rihanna and Paul Rudd and Kevin Hart die in a sink hole abyss; knowing Rogan, Baruchel, Franco, McBride, Robinson and Hill are friends in real-life, all the movie references and Hollywood insider stuff, adds a lot to the end of time hilarity that ensues.

Was there anyone you had trouble convincing to be in the movie? Perhaps Rihanna or Watson?

Seth Rogan: “No one was that bad, I gotta say. They were all pretty enthusiastic. Maybe Emma Watson had more of a hard time wrapping her head around it, but she wasn’t even hard to convince. We didn’t want people that we had a hard time convincing. There’s such ridiculous shit in the movie that if they were in any way not down to do stuff, then they wouldn’t have worked out.” READ MORE – Refinery29.com

Co-Writer/Co Director Evan Goldberg: We only asked friends or people who we just took to be cool. Like, we read online that one of Rihanna’s favorite movies is Pineapple Express, so we were like, “Oh, she likes our movie. Let’s give her a try.” READ MORE GQ

Jay Baruchel: The nucleus of it started from this short that Seth and I made in ’06. And you know, we didn’t think anything would come of it so why not play ourselves? And then it kind of connected to people, and I think people liked the sort of self-effacing/self-referential inside joke. For whatever reason, it connected to people, us being ourselves. And so when it came time to magnify it and make it a fleshed-out, three-act feature film… You know, I know that was a huge battle that Seth and Evan had to fight with the studio the whole time because that was the thing they took the most issue with. It was none of the religious stuff, none of the thematic stuff, none of the gore. The issue the studio had, the biggest issue they had, was us playing ourselves. READ MORE Craveonline.com

Craig Robinson: I don’t think I am as whiny. I cry a lot in this movie, for the silly factor, but I don’t think I am that cry babyish. I think I’d be more like, “Yeah, bring it mother fucker.” READ MORE ScreenRant.com

James Franco: My character’s, y’know, stupider, he’s got the emotional level of a 13-year-old. They all do, I think. And you know, he’s just a little shallower than I like to think that I am…
I’m not quite sure why it’s at my house. That’s the other thing, we’re supposed to be in my big mansion, but I don’t have a house. I live in an apartment in New York, a pretty small one, on the Lower East Side. I guess of all of our group, our friends, maybe I’ve branched out into other kinds of movies, so maybe I am the easiest to classify as the Hollywood guy with a big mansion. READ MORE ScreenRant.com

Jonah Hill – And while his co-stars were happy to talk about passing gas, don’t try asking Hill about flatulence. “I’m not answering that dumb question!” Hill snapped. “I’m not that kind of person! Being in a funny movie doesn’t make me have to answer dumb questions. It has nothing to do with who I am.” READ MORE Yahoomovies.com

Danny McBride: It’s insane. The script is absolutely nuts. It’s just another one of those movies where you get it, and you’re just pleased that someone is willing to pay money for something so insane, you know? It’s unlike anything that I’ve seen before or worked on before. READ MORE Ain’titcoolnews.com

Food in Film Moment: Even if it was the last candy bar on earth, I wouldn’t be that happy about a Milky Way, a Snickers, yes, but not a Milky Way.

LAMB Score 4 out of 5