This is the End (3/5 Stars)

A review of what must be the last buddy comedy from Team Rogen/Goldberg. Bonus: an in-depth analysis of rape jokes. 

A message to all would be writers out there. There are three types of stories you can write that do not need any type of research and which can actually still be quite good. These include “The Coming of Age” story, the “Romance” story, and the “Death” story. These do not need any research because all the details can be taken directly from personal experience. As long as you are fairly observant about what you regularly see and aren’t a total A-hole, people should be able to empathize with the story and enjoy it. However once these stories have exhausted themselves, any further attempts to tell the same types of stories without making the movies about anything more than oneself will generally feel derivative and let us be honest a bit narcissistic. At some point in your career you must start doing that work. Let’s stop being theoretical and start naming names.

Judd Apatow is a good example. He wrote three good movies that people went and saw. “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” which can be accurately described as a coming of age story. “Knocked Up” which is the romance. And “Funny People,” which is the death story. Not a bad track record, but I don’t think anyone bothered to see his latest movie, “This is 40.” Why? Because Judd Apatow has basically already said everything he could about himself, and “This is 40” is merely another movie about himself. The other three were too, but at least they had originality. We had not seen these stories about this particular person before.

Will Ferrell and Adam McKay are good examples of how writers can extend their shelf life by doing work. Will Ferrell has played the same type of character many times before (especially back in his sports comedy days) but his movies are generally about different things. This he has done especially well with his past few movies about regulation of wall street (The Other Guys) and politics (The Campaign). I think it is fair to say that when Will Ferrell and Adam McKay are writing their next movie, they might be reading some books instead of just constantly getting high.

That should be a good segway into writing team Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. They were responsible for the great Superbad, the pretty good Pineapple Express, and now This is the End. What all these movies have in common is that they concern a pair of two guys who are at a crossroads in their friendship and there is some sort of intoxicant involved. Superbad had two high school seniors about to go to different colleges who are trying to buy alcohol for a party in order to impress girls. Pineapple Express is about two twenty-somethings, a pot smoker and his regular drug dealer, that reluctantly bond while running away from drug lords. This is the End concerns two almost middle-aged guys (Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel) on different career tracks who reluctantly bond during the apocalypse. It should be noted that the apocalypse happens but not before everyone smokes a lot of pot. They also smoke a lot of pot after the apocalypse happens. Generally, writers graduate from the “Coming of Age” story into something else at some point. These guys are sort of doing the same story about two friends who like to get high over and over again with just ever escalating background drama. This has to be the last time they tell this story right? They can’t top the apocalypse. I kept thinking of Oliver Stone’s movie “Natural Born Killers,” while watching this movie. They are both good movies and “This is the End” is certainly funny most of the time, but I just have this sinking feeling that we really are watching the end here. Like Stone, the writing team has self-imploded on pot and won’t be making anything worth seeing again. Like drugs, movies about drug use are always better the first time or rather the first time the characters are doing the drugs. The older the characters get, the less fun and more sad a story that revolves around stoners gets. Imagine if Rogen and Goldberg really did write a sequel to Pineapple Express. The actors in this movie (Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride and James Franco) play “themselves” and spend some time getting high, talking about the possibility and actually making a home video version of Pineapple Express 2 while the world burns outside. It is pretty funny, yes, but seriously do not make that movie.

This movie contains the Apocalypse but do not mistake it for a movie about surviving the Apocalypse. Nobody here has a clue about what to do as sinkholes to hell form in the ground, the Hollywood Hills burst into flames, and demons of all shape and size roam the countryside killing celebrities in brutal fashion. Most of the action takes place in James Franco’s mansion where a huge party was taking place when the rapture started. Conveniently none of the comedians were taken up into heaven at the beginning so we get to hear some very funny petty arguing about who gets the last Milky Way bar, who is going to venture outside to get water, and why aren’t we good people who get to go to heaven. The humor ranges to pretty raunchy extremes. At some points I was wondering why the movie did not get an NC-17 rating. I mean, usually if you show a gigantic erect penis in a movie, it is deemed pornographic. Why does it matter if it belongs to the devil and not a human being? Does the MPAA really make a distinction about the difference between human penises and demon penises? Given the R rating, I suppose it does.

In any case, given that this movie contains plenty of pretty successful and some not so successful humor about some rather extreme stuff (and lord knows the way things are going, movies are only going to get even more extreme) I think now might be a good time to delve into a discussion of the proper way to make jokes about very extreme stuff. So as a bonus to your usual review, here is an in-depth analysis of rape jokes. We will take a look at three examples from This is the End and try to figure out what makes them okay/not okay and funny/not funny.

BONUS IN-DEPTH RAPE JOKE ANALYSIS

First: a note on that correct attitude for a rape joke analysis. Why would any comedian want to tell a rape joke? Think about it this way. Any joke in any context always teeters on the edge of funny/not funny. In many cases the difference between people nodding along and rolling on the ground laughing has nothing to do with the subject of the joke. It has to do with the correct amount of voice inflection, word choice, rhythm, misdirection, and improvisation towards the present audience. A rape joke, given the topic’s inherent solemnity, is especially fragile. Tell a knock-knock joke badly and people may groan. Tell a rape joke wrong and you may seriously hurt someone’s feelings. Having said that, the best rape joke will always be better than the best knock-knock joke given the way that certain jokes work. (Why that is will be explained.) Because of this telling a great rape joke is a bit like scaling Mount Everest. They can get big laughs, only the best comedians can do it, and if you try it without knowing what you are doing you just might die in the process. For those reasons jokes about rape and plenty other very taboo subjects are continually attempted by comedians. They are either successful or not. What needs to be understand however is that the main purpose of the joke is to make people laugh not to promote rape.

Let’s lay down some ground rules. These come from Sigmund Freud’s joke book Jokes and Their Relationship to the Subconscious. I have not found a better explanation of how jokes work and believe me it is not from a lack of trying. Comedians sometimes try to explain why things are funny but unfortunately a lot of them are kind of in the dark when it comes to their craft, or are guided mainly by instinct which should explain why one of the best movies about telling a joke, The Aristocrats, is not especially funny.

Freud says there are three causes of laughter. I will label them jokes of Efficiency, Misdirection, or Hostility. This is the End has a rape joke for each one. Let’s start with the easiest to explain.

Efficient Joke telling, Freud says, is the art of not using as few words as possible but using too few words. Take a pun for example: a Buddhist monk refused anesthesia at his local dentist’s office. His goal: Transcend dental medication. The pun conveys two meanings in the space of one. In this way, it saves the brain psychic energy, which is released in the form of a sense of relief and laughter. Take note that if I phrased the joke differently it would not be funny. A Buddhist refused anesthesia at his local dentist’s office. He did so because he misunderstood the phrase transcendental meditation, a form of Buddhist prayer, for the phrase transcend dental medication. Tedious, a bit? Brevity is the soul of wit, so only say what is needed to say, if that. In This is the End, after a series of petty arguments, Jonah Hill prays to God to kill Jay Baruchel. Instead a demon comes into Jonah’s room while he is sleeping. As the demon climbs up onto Jonah, he scratches his arm with his hooves and leaves three marks. Jonah opens his eyes and exclaims, “This isn’t a dream. This is real!”

Do you get the joke? Maybe, depending on whether you are already informed as to what this scene is parodying. A parody like a pun is an efficient joke. It conveys two meanings in the space of one, given of course that the audience knows what the pun is referring two. In this case, you would have had to see Roman Polanski’s 1968 classic horror movie “Rosemary’s Baby.” The line “This isn’t a dream, this is real!” is uttered by Mia Farrow. Her husband, in exchange for help in his career, has drugged his wife and essentially sold her to a coven of witches so they can have a host for the spawn of the devil. The drugs wear off just as the devil is climbing on top of her, scratching her arms with his hooves. (By the way, this is the last movie you should ever show to your pregnant wife.) Parodies are a derivative form of joke, and like puns, they can sometimes elicit groans as being way too obvious, like for instance, TV shows that parody Star Wars or The Godfather ad infinitum. An efficient joke told too many times loses its efficiency. This was the first time anybody parodied “Rosemary’s Baby” and so I thought it was funny (not to mention the obscure reference massaged my film buff ego). Of course, now that I’ve explained it to you, you probably won’t find it funny, but hey, that’s just the way efficient jokes work!

A Joke of Misdirection, Freud says, is the art of bringing up a not-funny topic as a mere distraction for something else far more benign. A not-funny topic, let’s say rape, instills in the listener a sense of danger. So they put up mental defenses in order to deal with this topic. But the joke is not about this not-funny topic. It is entirely about something else. As the listener comes to this realization it brings down its mental defenses, causing psychic relief with the side effect of laughter. One of the best examples is the Black Knight fight in “Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail.” King Arthur is having a duel with the Black Knight in order to cross a bridge and succeeds in chopping off the Black Knight’s arm. But the fight does not stop here. The Black Knight seemingly in no pain at all insists that they continue. “But I cut your bleeding arm off!” The king says. “No, you didn’t” contradicts the Black Knight. “Yes I did!” the king insists pointing to the Black Knight’s lack of arm. The Black Knight pauses and then remarks “Tis’ but a flesh wound. Now, have at it.” The end of the skit has the King finally acquiescing to a draw after he chops off all the remaining limbs and the Black Knight still won’t admit defeat.

We have been presented with something rather serious, dismemberment (and probably death), which has been subsequently misdirected into something harmless and absurd, petty bickering as to whether the duel is over or not and who is winning it. Generally the more serious the topic is the funnier the joke can be if and only if the misdirection is successfully pulled off.

The misdirection rape joke in This is the End works like this. After three days of hanging out in James Franco while the apocalypse rages outside, the six men are treated to an unexpected guest in the form of Emma Watson. For those who live in caves, Emma Watson played Hermoine in the last eight Harry Potter movies and is widely considered to be especially beautiful. She has been hiding in a drainage pipe for the last 72 hours. She is dirty. She is tired. And she has nowhere else to turn. James Franco immediately offers his bedroom for her to stay in. She takes this offer, heads upstairs, and the six guys have a conversation. Jay Baruchel starts it. He relates to the guys the importance of making Emma Watson feel comfortable given the obvious situation. The other guys agree and promise not to overburden her with questions about working on the Harry Potter movies. She probably gets a lot of that and it is probably really annoying by now. No, Jay says, the other situation. You know the apocalypse outside and the disappearance of all lawful society and the fact that she is the only female in a house with six guys. We want to make her feel comfortable and not put out the wrong vibe, he implores. “What vibe?” the group asks. “What are you talking about, Jay?” Jay, ever the shy nice guy, feels reluctant to actually say the words. So Danny McBride pipes in, “I think what Jay means is a ‘rapey vibe.” The group becomes indignant and insulted. Nobody was at all considering raping Hermoine. And then the conversation devolves into some petty bickering as to who exactly Jay was specifically worried about so much that he felt the need to bring up the rape topic. They point fingers and accuse each other until McBride suggests that Jay isn’t worried about Emma at all and instead brought up the topic because he is afraid of soon becoming the house bitch himself. Emma for her part is in the bedroom only hearing enough of the conversation to pick out the word ‘rape’ a bunch of times. So she accosts the group with a fire axe, steals all of their water, and leaves the mansion.

This is one of the best jokes in the movie and perhaps you can see the misdirection. The subject of Emma Watson being gang-raped is brought into the audience’s consciousness. It is a very serious thing and the psychic defenses to go up in order to deal with such a situation. But soon enough it becomes clear that she is not in any danger. Nobody in the house is thinking rape but the nicest shyest guy who brings the topic for the sole purpose of protecting her. Finally the joke ends on a suggestion that even Jay does not think it is likely and is only acting out of a selfish desire to protect his own self. At this point the misdirection is so complete it actually becomes unnecessary for Emma to vividly demonstrate her ability to defend herself, but why not show it anyway. She whacks Seth Rogen in the face with the axe but. And then she leaves the movie entirely. So don’t worry. There is no way she is going to get raped and nobody is suggesting that it should happen. Relax.

A Joke of Hostility, Freud says, is the only type of joke that does not particularly need any cleverness. It is an insult that gives pleasure. The idea is thus: You are a human being with instinctual desires to do anything and everything you want whenever you want to do it. Society sets up rule saying you cannot whatever you want. An insult directed at these boundaries and the people/institutions that set them up is pleasurable. What are the usual culprits here? Politics, Religion, Sex. Not coincidentally, those topics are the holy triumvirate of Comedy. What needs to be understood when someone critiques these kinds of jokes is that they are literally funny even if they are absolutely offensive. Let’s say you are in grade school minding your own business on the playground and a group of kids comes over, steals your ball, and beats you up. Is that funny? Well, you probably wouldn’t think so, but listen to all the laughter. How can you say it isn’t? Laughter is objective proof that something somewhere is funny. Let’s take a much more public example: comedian Seth MacFarlane’s hosting of the 2013 Oscar telecast, in particular we can discuss a highly derided musical number he did with the inexplicably named Gay Men’s Choir of Tuscon titled “We got to see your boobs!” In this song he insulted every actress in the audience who had ever appeared nude in a movie regardless of context. It is a particularly dramatic insult. He is taking the work of an actress and completely disregarding anything and everything and saying that is the only part that matters is the boobs. To make it more dramatic, he does not make the joke as he is masturbating to Mr. Skin in the privacy of his home. He is doing this to a captive audience of actresses in the room in front of a billion people watching TV. Boy, did Charlize Theron look humiliated. I’m sure Seth MacFarlane thought the whole thing was hilarious. He must have because it takes months to plan and practice an Oscar Telecast and he had a team of writers working with him. They must have had long conversations over long tables about how funny it was. The joke bombed terribly at the Oscar show and the main reason is that for the joke to work the audience would have to hate women. The audience in the building is at least half women and men that work closely with them. The audience watching around the world is primarily women; the Oscar telecast being not only about movies but a huge night for fashion. (The Female Super Bowl it is consistently referred to.) Surely I have never witnessed such a colossal comedic miscalculation on such a grand scale before, but why it happened can nevertheless be explained. Seth thought it was funny and to him it was because he is a total douchebag who hates women. Freud blames this on sexual frustration. He vould say that Seth believes, probably correctly, that none of the actresses in the audience would ever sleep with him and so he is out for revenge. Anyway, the epilogue to this story is that the producers who hired Seth have been hired again for next year. The show got very good ratings although it probably was not because the show was any good (it wasn’t) but because it had been the rare year when many of the movies nominated had been very popular with mass audiences. I guess the people at the Academy that hire the producers want to be irrefutably proved wrong before changing anything.

Now how about that hostile rape joke in This is the End. It comes near the end. Danny McBride had been earlier thrown out of the house for wasting water and masturbating on James Franco’s last porno mag. After a bunch of other stuff that I won’t give away happens, James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Jay Baruchel find themselves outside the house running away from demons as well.  And at that point they run into apocalyptic gang of rapists/cannibals led by none other than Danny McBride who plans on….you guessed it…raping and eating his old friends. To prove he has turned this evil within say 24 hours he brings out his sex slave who he has already sodomized several times. And making a neat celebrity cameo is Channing Tatum.

There are a few things that make this not so not funny. One, Channing is a very strong man. Second, he has consented to being in this movie.  Third, it is kind of surprising to see him here at all. But the joke really is not all that funny. It is not clever in an efficient way and surely isn’t misdirection. According to McBride he has already been raped several times. So to find it funny you would have to not like Channing Tatum or perhaps just not like celebrities. There is a repeated hostile joke in this movie involving celebrities dying horrific deaths. These like the rape joke are counting on the audience to have some sort of hostility towards the idea of celebrity in and of itself. This I do not share, most likely because I generally do not watch bad movies. I hear Channing has been in a couple stinkers (GI Joe) but as I have yet to see them, I do not share the hostility. So for me this particular joke was not all that funny.

But you may say, “Hey Max, I don’t hate anybody. I would never find hostile jokes to be funny.” Ha, ha, ha, of course you hate people. Everybody hates somebody. But I understand where you are coming from: you aren’t or at least do not want to be a total douchebag like Seth MacFarlane. So the question is how can one laugh at hostile jokes without being a total douchebag? It is a question of not what is funny but what is polite social behavior and I may as well name the rule after myself because I’m making it up right now.

Max’s Rule of Hostile yet Polite Jokes: The polite amount of laughter one may derive from a hostile joke must be directly proportional to the power of the subject being attacked. So making hostile jokes directed at children, the homeless, the disabled, oppressed minorities, illegal immigrants, and the like are not politely funny. Jokes directed at prime ministers, presidents, corporate CEOs, school principals, are politely funny. It should be noted that any of the above powerless categories could become politely funny if given power. For instance, it is not polite to make fun of someone’s blindness, but if a blind man becomes the Governor of New York it totally polite to make fun of his blindness. If you have never seen SNL’s lampooning of the blind ex-Governor David Patterson, believe me it is very funny.

Let’s wrap this up: Can a hostile rape joke directed at a woman ever be politely funny. There is potential for it of course, but it depends on a directly proportional amount of glass ceilings being broken it would have to be directed at a particular woman and not just the gender. I cannot think of a more hostile joke than a rape joke. Even death is not nearly so hostile. I do not know how many rape jokes were directed at Maggie Thatcher, but I do know there is a big musical number in the play “Billy Elliot” that is all about wishing her a swift death. On the day of her death, the current Broadway Production asked its audience as to whether it wanted to keep the song. The audience voted to keep it in. Was that misogynistic? Of course not. Maggie Thatcher was the prime minister of England. She was making policy choices that directly affected the lives of millions of people. She had power. Contrast that with Charlize Theron being forced to sit silently through Seth MacFarlane’s crassness and you have a clear example of how power affects the politeness of a hostile joke. It also matters if the powerful person is a terrible person. For instance, hostile rape jokes directed at Hitler are always polite.