Recently, Hollywood created many films focused on the apocalypse. This is the End is the latest film about the end of the world – but it’s a comedy rather than a drama, and is no less than absolutely hilarious.

When Jay Baruchel flies into Los Angeles to visit his fellow Canadian buddy Seth Rogan for a couple of days, the two friends first catch up for a while at Seth’s Hollywood bachelor pad. When Seth mentions that James Franco is having a huge party at his new house, Jay is wary of the party because he’s not a huge fan of Seth’s new friends – James Franco, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson, to name a few. Reluctantly, Jay eventually agrees to go.

After spending a bit of time at the party, Jay feels ignored by Seth, and storms off to a local convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes. While at the store, a huge earthquake occurs, and Jay witnesses people quite literally being sucked up through beams of light into the sky. When Jay and Seth rush back to James Franco’s to see if everyone is okay, they find his house perfectly intact due to the strong concrete foundation of which it’s made. However, a few minutes later, another earthquake hits which kills the vast majority of people (celebrities) at the party. After everything calms down, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson are seemingly the only survivors from the party. Upon realizing that it’s the apocalypse as laid out in the book of Revelations, they must find a way to survive and be taken into heaven before the devil, quite literally, takes their souls.

Although the characters in the film are pretty scared of the end of the world and the devil throughout, it’s clear that This is the End was fearlessly created. Very grotesque and pushing the “R” MPAA rating fairly far, the movie was done with confidence and makes for a ridiculous, hilarious outcome and makes the audience laugh-out-loud for the majority of the movie. It doesn’t mock other apocalyptic movies, but rather mocks, in an exaggerated way, how celebrities would handle the end of time during the apocalypse. The idea of creating a fictional movie with actors starring as themselves hasn’t been done before – at least not on this scale – and was a genius and extremely successful idea. I can only hope more films in this style are created in the future, preferably by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who both wrote and co-directed This is the End.

While every character in the film stars as themselves, it’s (assumed and hopefully) clear that every actor is portraying either a much exaggerated or very different version of themselves: Jonah Hill is the ridiculously nice and polite person, James Franco and Seth Rogan are extreme potheads, Danny McBride is the back-stabbing friend, and Emma Watson goes crazy when people cross her. While it’s hilarious to see how they would each handle the end of the world type of situation, it’s also mind-blowing to see other actors with a smaller role in the film in situations you wouldn’t ever imagine – i.e., Michael Cera on so many drugs he can barely function and Emma Watson dropping the F-bomb over 10 times.

After the scene where James Franco and Seth Rogan smoke a considerable amount of marijuana and discuss creating a sequel to Pineapple Express, it made me curious if that’s exactly how This is the End was conceived. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it is true due to how ridiculous many scenes are.

Artistically, the film does have a nice pace. The fictional versions of the characters/celebrities are developed nicely, and the plot continuously brings surprises which captured my attention the entire time.

This is the End mocks the celebrity-obsessed culture in America while dealing with the end of the world – and in turn, is one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a long while. Although it probably won’t be nominated for any prestigious awards, it’s still definitely worth seeing solely because you’ll be laughing from start to finish, in addition to the surprising and unimaginable plot twists.

Grade: B+

Rated: R (for crude and sexual content throughout, brief graphic nudity, pervasive language, drug use and some violence )

This is the End opens in theaters on June 12, 2013.