This is the end Movie review

Long-time writing partners (and on this occasion, first-time directors) Seth Roger and Even Goldberg are smart enough to never let this is the End merely rests on the laurels of its berserk stunt casting. (How berserk? Try Harry Potter’s Emma Watson running amok with an axe. Or how about Superb super-nerd Michael Care annoyingly blowing cocaine in the face of anyone and everyone? ) Once that this is the End has summarily executed 90 per cent of its ensemble by the half-hour mark – even the unstoppable Iranian can’t cheat the reaper – the movie takes a turn for the better.

The final two acts leave us cooped up in the confines of Franc’s post-modern man-cave with a handful of surly survivors. Among these last men standing you will find Roger, his real-life best buddy Jay Barbecue (She’s Out of My League), Joana Hill (Moneybags), Danny McBride (Your Highness) and Craig Robinson (the US version of TV’s The Office). What follows is a solid hour of semi-improvised sledging, accompanied by much ingestion of illicit substances and, I kid you not, the liming of a four-minute sequel to Pineapple Express.

As far as stoner comedies go, this is the End does hit the same number of flat spots experienced by the worst and best of the genre. What saves the movie from an irreversible slide into self-indulgence is the sincerely biblical nature of the impending Armageddon happening just beyond Franc’s front door. On the select occasions anyone does venture outside, the special-effects work that greets them is at once horrifying and hilarious.