This is the End

This is the End has an 84% positive rating among both critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, so I saw it last night.

This is how Sony bills the film:

The comedy This Is The End follows six friends trapped in a house after a series of strange and catastrophic events devastate Los Angeles. As the world unravels outside, dwindling supplies and cabin fever threaten to tear apart the friendships inside. Eventually, they are forced to leave the house, facing their fate and the true meaning of friendship and redemption.

It's a clever concept. And I had heard somewhere that the actors, who play themselves, are supposed to be self-deprecating in their roles, which made it sound promising as well. 

It didn't live up to the promise. It's basically a teen comedy about a bunch of dumb, self-indulgent actors who run around acting like hysterical ninnies. And the actors weren't truly self-deprecating: any of the foolishness could have been portrayed by any of the actors, and the indiscriminate insults could have fit any of them. 

I read once that in a well-written screenplay, none of the lines could be uttered by any of the characters except the one who said it. This movie was the opposite: Apart from the references to their previous movies, virtually all of the lines were completely interchangeable. Which made this a very poorly written film.

By the end of This is the End, it was apparent that the only way in which the actors had really made fun of themselves was by demonstrating how lousy a movie they could make.