The Apocalypse Hilariously Hits Seth Rogen & Gang In THIS IS THE END

Opening this evening at a multiplex near you:

THIS IS THE END (Dirs. Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen, 2013)

In a scenario that was no doubt conceived between bong hits, Seth Rogen and his gang of Hollywood player pals - James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, and Jay Baruchel - all play themselves facing the end of times when the Apocalypse hilariously hits Los Angeles during a wild party at Franco’s house.



After the nearly laughless endeavors that were THE HANGOVER PART III and THE INTERNSHIP, comedy lovers have reason to rejoice this season, because the directorial debut of Rogen and writing partner Evan Goldberg (SUPERBAD, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS) is surely the funniest film of the summer.



I laughed more than I remember laughing at a screening in a long time, and with the lines and sight gags coming so quickly, I feel like I may have laughed over and missed a whole other movie’s worth of jokes.

It starts off amusingly on an easy going meta level of these people being relatable guys despite having been in hit movies, with Baruchel, who starred with Rogen in Judd Apatow’s short-lived Fox series Undeclared (2001-02) before going on to be in films like SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE, THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, flying out to hang with his best pal Rogen in L.A.



Baruchel doesn’t feel comfortable around Rogen’s other buddies - i.e. the rest of the cast - so he doesn’t want to go to a party at Franco’s fortress of a house in the Hollywood hills, but Rogen talks him into it.



The party that the full of himself Franco is hosting is filled with other celebrities playing exaggerated comic versions of themselves including Michael Cera (one of the funniest as he portrays himself as a coked-up bisexual douche), Paul Rudd, Mindy Kaling, Rihanna, Emma Watson, Jason Segel, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (you know, McLovin!). When firestorms and sinkholes start appearing, some of the famous folks present are immediately goners, but the core crew of the six above-the-title stars hole up in Franco’s mansion, divvy up supplies, and try to figure out how to survive the Biblical rapture.

But Baruchel is the only one who actually believes it’s the rapture, the others stupidly dismiss that idea as much as they do him, as Hill and Franco seem to see themselves as rival BFFs to Rogen, while Robinson and McBride, who shows up uninvited and unwanted, are only thinking of themselves.

The film puts the same amount of energy into jabs at the silliness surrounding friendships, and the selfishness of stardom, as it does the scads of gross-out humor involving a severed head being kicked around the room, drinking one’s own urine (how Robinson is able to sell this with charm is a gag to behold), and, via some not bad special effects, a 60-foot Satan with a swinging penis (that’s right). This non-cynical approach to this ridiculous material reveals over and over that these guys’ only concern is pure comedy, and they go all out trying to give the audience as much as they can take.

Things that made me laugh: the makeshift sequel to PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (virally released as a fake trailer on April Fool’s Day earlier this year) that the gang produces to amuse themselves (Rogen: “We should make sequels to more of our movies.” Franco: “How about we not do ‘Your Highness’”), how Hill identified himself when praying (“It’s me, Jonah Hill, the guy from ‘Money Ball’”), McBride’s arrogant and obnoxious behavior (funnier here than on Eastbound & Down) that lead to him getting kicked out of the house, and how the film wraps up in a pop culture-fied heaven (don’t think that’s really a Spoiler!).

Looks like former mentors and collaborators Apatow (whose name is surprisingly absent from the credits here), David Gordon Green (PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, MY HIGHNESS), and SUPERBAD director Greg Mottola weren't needed by Rogen, Evanberg, and crew to help bring the funny this time.

Practically everything that was supposed to be funny in THIS IS THE END was, though I’m sure in a film with such a high volume of jokes, one-liner, sight gags, and scatological silliness in it had some misfired groaners here and there. I was just laughing too hard at the stuff that hit to notice them.

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Blu Ray Review: Eastbound & Down: The Complete Third Season

Danny McBride’s crudely deluded Kenny Powers character keeps on losing while still thinking he’s a winner in the third season of Eastbound & Down out today on DVD and Blu ray.

McBride’s raunchy redneck shtick, which can be very funny but is often embarrassingly painful, is better served up by HBO in these half hour episodes than in misguided movies like YOUR HIGHNESS. Here, the mulleted has-been baseball star’s hard-partying behavior is neatly contained in easy to digest scenarios which don’t wear out their welcome, that is, unless you watch all eight of them in a marathon.

After the second season’s seedy adventures in Mexico, Kenny returns to the states and joins the Myrtle Beach Mermen baseball team. 



We catch up with our profane pervert of a protagonist on the beach with a boogie board that sports an image of the Confederate flag with a marijuana leaf in the middle. 

From there we go to the ballpark to meet the team’s relief pitcher, Shane Gerald, played by SNL’s Jason Sudekis, who McBride calls his best friend, to the irritation of his assistant Stevie (Stevie Janowski). At his son’s first birthday party, we learn from the returning Katy Nixon as April that Kenny hasn’t paid child support, and that she may regret having the baby.

That sets up the season’s arc - Kenny having to take care of his baby Toby after April takes off (Kenny left her at the end of the first season so it makes some sort of twisted sense). Kenny, of course, doesn’t take being a father seriously - he tells his college aged girlfriend (Alex ter Avest) “you think I wanna fuckin’ hang out with my fuckin’ son? Hell no, I’d much rather being doing cocaine and watching the SAW movies on DVD in your dorm room with you.” 

Will Farrell reprises the role of cocky corrupt car dealer Ashley Schaeffer from the first season in a few segments this season, the best of which might be in the second episode “Chapter 15,” but the most successful storyline that goes through the third and fourth episodes concerns Shane dying from a drug overdose (he was snorting coke to the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian,”) and Kenny trying to connect with his identical twin brother Cole (also played by Sudekis).

Although I like Janowski, who hasn’t been on anything else besides Eastbound, I wasn’t into how the show constantly humiliates his character, and his cheating on his wife (Elizabeth De Razzo) scenario didn’t go anywhere interesting.

The beautifully skuzzy Don Johnson returns as Kenny’s father, but the real news is that Lily Tomlin appears as his bowling champion mother. Matthew McConaughey, Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, and in a deleted scene, Val Kilmer, make cameos, but sadly there’s very little John Hawkes as Kenny’s brother, but obviously that’s because he’s got a busy movie career happening.

For better or worse, season three is pretty much the same quality as the first two seasons, so if you weren’t a fan before you won’t be won over, but folks who “get” McBride, and director/co-writer Jody Hill’s brand of bawdy, lowbrow humor will be highly satisfied with this 2 disc set.

Special Features: Extended scene of “Dinner at Schaeffer’s” (more fun with Will Ferrell from “Chapter 14”), commentaries on every episode (some of which are funnier than the episodes themselves), 48 minutes of deleted scenes including a way too long segment of Stevie cutting off his hair and shaving his head and eyebrows, and over 8 minutes of outtakes, which have their fair share of laughs.

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30 MINUTES OR LESS: The Film Babble Blog Review

30 MINUTES OR LESS (Dir. Ruben Fleischer, 2011)

“2 guys in masks jumped me and strapped a bomb to my chest and now I have less than 9 hours to rob a bank.”



Right there a frantic Jesse Eisenberg sums up the premise of this comedy to his best friend Aziz Ansari as a wise-cracking school teacher who responds just as frantically: “And your first thought was to come to a school filled with young children?!!?”



This is one of many spastic exchanges between Eisenberg and Ansari as they run around through this fast, and very funny farcical heist flick set in Grand Rapids, MI.



Like in his directorial debut ZOMBIELAND, Fleischer takes a well worn genre and jazzes it up with a winking wit.There’s shades of PINEAPPLE EXPRESS in the plotting (along with the casting of Danny McBride), along with RAISING ARIZONA and even bits of BOTTLE ROCKET in the mix, but those elements aren’t what makes 30 MINUTES OR LESS tick.



It’s the ton of hilarious lines and amusing moments, many of which were the obvious results of improv (and many out of the mouth of Ansari), and the infectious spirit of how these folks play off one another.



McBride and Nick Swardson are the slacker criminals who kidnap pizza delivery boy Eisenberg and outfit him with a bomb, and it’s because they want the money he’ll rob to hire a hitman (Michael Peña) to kill McBride’s father (Fred Ward) for the inheritance money.



Meanwhile Eisenberg is in love with Ansari’s sister (Dilshad Vadsaria), which is a romantic subplot that doesn’t really matter except for some third act leverage, but I didn’t mind because it raced by like the rest of the action onscreen.



I laughed a lot during this movie. It’s definitely one of the funniest movies of the year, up there with BRIDESMAIDS and HORRIBLE BOSSES. In a chaotic car chase scene with Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On” blaring on the soundtrack, recalling BEVERLY HILLS COP, I had the sense of being in on the joke more so than in those other comedies.



Though the story comes close to falling apart in its last half, it’s a brisk but bountiful laugh fest (be sure to stay through the credits for a bonus scene) with the everyman Eisenberg, an amped-up Ansari, a much more on point than in the Medieval misfire YOUR HIGHNESS McBride, and the best big screen work of Swardson I’ve ever seen (though that’s not saying an awful lot judging from his filmography).



30 MINUTES OR LESS is getting some attention because of the similarities to a real life happening, but that incident is quickly forgotten once you get with the tone and the timing of this film, and that took less than 30 seconds for me.



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YOUR HIGHNESS: The Film Babble Blog Review

YOUR HIGHNESS (Dir. David Gordon Green, 2011)

Sometimes really funny people make really unfunny films.

The comic pedigree of the folks involved in this medieval mess is strong – director David Gordon Green, actor/co-writer Danny McBride, and actor James Franco were all key players in one of my favorite comedies of the last 5 years: PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, but this comes nowhere near the laughter level of that manic marijuana-tinged movie.

It sure tries to, with scores of drug, sex, and bloody slaughter gags, yet none of them elicited even as much as a slight giggle out of me.

Here’s the plot anyway: McBride is an oafish prince who reluctantly joins his heroic brother (Franco) on a quest to rescue Franco’s fiancée (a dim witted Zooey Deschanel) from the clutches of an evil wizard (Justin Theroux).

Along the way they encounter Natalie Portman as a warrior princess, and they travel together taking on a five headed serpent monster, treacherous knights working for Theroux, and every profane expression known to be ever spoken by man.

On the surface YOUR HIGHNESS has everything necessary for a fantasy action comedy set during the Dark Ages – it’s got tons of sword play, silly sorcery by way of not-bad CGI, a horse-drawn chariot chase, severed limbs, gratuitous forest nymph nudity, and gorgeous locations in Northern Ireland.

Everything that is, except for legitimate laughs.

Reportedly much of the film was improvised, which makes sense because the dialogue is awful without any lines worth quoting.

McBride is simply doing his predictable slimeball schtick that he does on the HBO series East Bound And Down, and it wears thin really fast in this set-up.

All of McBride’s characteristics come off as clunky as the armor he wears.

Franco and Portman are both slumming it after their loftier turns in 127 HOURS and BLACK SWAN respectively, and it’s obvious they did this because they thought it would be fun, and I’m not doubting they had fun on set, but on screen they sadly look like they are wasting a lot of energy on extremely moronic material.

Deschanel seems detached from it all, maybe a result of certain substances that no doubt were passed around by the cast and crew.

As for the rest of the supporting players like Rasmus Hardiker, Toby Jones, and Charles Dance, I’ll let them off the hook – it’s bad enough for them to be in this film.

YOUR HIGHNESS is a crude cringe-inducing crap-fest devoid of wit and invention. I doubt even teenage stoners will laugh at it. I’m seriously surprised McBride, Franco, and Green think it would be funny, because they are capable of so much more comically.

“This quest sucks!” McBride complains at one point. I heartily agree.

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DUE DATE: The Film Babble Blog Review

DUE DATE (Dir. Todd Phillips, 2010)

As surely every critic has said this is essentially a remake of PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES except the trains are replaced with drugs and much more scatological humor.

In the Steve Martin role is Robert Downey Jr. who is trying to get from Atlanta to Los Angeles for his wife’s c-section and he’s saddled with Zack Galifinakis in the John Candy role.

Galifianakis is an air-headed pot-smoking eccentric with a perm toting around a small dog who dreams of going to Hollywood to become an actor.

Downey Jr. is, uh, I forget his profession, but he’s an uptight jerk.

Mix in Michelle Monaghan as Downey Jr.’s pregnant wife and cameos from Jamie Foxx, Juliette Lewis, Danny McBride (the only one who’s slightly funny here), and RZA and you’ve got yourself a wasted cast.

Downey Jr. and Galifianakis wreck a rental car, get in a high speed chase in a stolen Mexican security vehicle, and get stoned as well as other not worth mentioning shenanigans.

All the while Galifianakis has his recently deceased father's ashes in a coffee can. Inevitably somebody accidentally brews it as coffee. This actually results in one of the few good lines when Galifianakis says: "Well, that's the circle of life - my father enjoyed drinking coffee, and we enjoyed my father AS coffee."

There are laughs here and there in DUE DATE, but not enough to make this anywhere near a solid comedy.

Like in “The Hangover” Phillips shoots like he’s making a drama with too many close-ups and unnecessary crane shots.

It’s the parts that try to get personal that fall flattest. The much much funnier PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES had a satisfactory sentimental tone in its earned conclusion, but this film’s heart is shoehorned in.

I mean what’s the point of giving Downey Jr. a serious monologue about how his father left when he was a kid? Oh yeah, I remember – it was a set-up to a lame joke by Galifianakis about how his father wouldn’t do that because he loved him. Ugh.

There’s also the badly handled subplot that Downey Jr. gets into his mind that his wife may have cheated on him with his best friend Foxx. Again that’s only there to set up another lame joke.

Both Downey Jr. and Galifianakis are likable credible actors, but here they are 2 guys that most people would want to stay away from. The same can be said about the movie.

But hey! If you like humor about slugging kids in the gut or masturbating dogs – this may be the movie for you.

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