"This Is the End"

The Los Angeles Apocalypse, when the Lotus Eaters of L.A. finally get what's coming to them, is a popular topic worldwide, and is a particular favorite of Angelenos. As local bestselling author Mike Davis says, Los Angeles is "the doom capital of the universe." For example, Jerry Pournelle told me recently that he continues to do very nicely off Kindle sales of his and Larry Niven's Lucifer's Hammer, the most logistically magisterial of all Los Angeles Apocalypse stories, in which a comet wreaks havoc on Lankershim Boulevard.

Seth Rogen's "This Is the End" is a movie comedy in which a half dozen actors (such as Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson) have to hole up in James Franco's Hollywood Hills mansion when The Rapture lifts all the good people to heaven, leaving Los Angeles a fiery wasteland tormented by demons and populated mostly by movie stars.

Assuming that they are merely victims of a huge earthquake and that the Army will soon rescue them, the stars -- with no personal assistants to advise them -- fail repeatedly at prepping. An ax-wielding Emma Watson (Hermione of the Harry Potter movies) briefly shows up, having impressively survived what she cogently argues must be the Zombie Apocalypse, but soon ditches the male losers.

The not very masculine actors spend most of their time smoking weed and arguing over their friendships like junior high school girls. (It seems trivial, but, actually, 9 figures  of money are at stake over whether Franco and Rogen decide to do Pineapple Express 2 together.)

Rogen once again somehow makes himself being reasonable while beset by psychopaths funny (although not as funny as an interview he and Barbra Streisand did last Christmas with Dr. Phil to promote their movie in which they play son and mother, an interview in which Babs was her usual megalomanical self and Seth tried, ineffectually, to return her to the level horizon of reason and self-awareness).

Only the 3/4ths gentile Jay Baruchel and the black Robinson notice the obvious parallels of what's happening to Los Angeles to the "Book of Revelation" in the New Testament, a tome with which Rogen, Hill, and Franco are blankly unfamiliar.

It's pretty funny.