This Is the End

When the average group of friends impulsively gathers to make a home movie, it’s usually something you wouldn’t want shown outside of your own basement.

When buddies such as Seth Rogen, James Franco and Jonah Hill decide to do it, the result is This Is the End, a freewheeling comedy that features enough scattered hilarious moments to compensate for its contrived one-joke premise.

The fictional story takes place during a celebrity-studded housewarming party at Franco’s house on the same night that the apocalypse strikes Los Angeles, causing massive death and destruction.

The disaster leaves Franco trapped with fellow actors Rogen, Hill, Craig Robinson (Peeples), Jay Baruchel (She’s Out of My League) and Danny McBride (Your Highness) over the course of a hectic night that will test their rapport and survival skills, as they fight over provisions and ponder the afterlife.

The film’s structure seems to put it squarely in sitcom territory, yet the actors obviously are having fun (in largely improvisational roles, of course), and their performances are infectious, as is their camaraderie.

Smartly, the approach is more self-deprecating than self-indulgent, as the actors poke fun at their careers and their varying degrees of fame. In creating fictional versions of themselves, they toy with public perception and satirize their own friendship.

The first half-hour is chaotic and outrageous, allowing viewers to play spot-a-celebrity with a roster of party-attending cameos that includes Michael Cera, David Krumholtz, Rihanna, Paul Rudd, Channing Tatum, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart, Aziz Ansari, Jason Segel and others.

Rogen, who wrote and directed the film with frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg, keeps the tone gleefully vulgar and irreverent (one highlight is Robinson’s T-shirt that he wears throughout which reads, “Take Yo Panties Off!!!”), with a range of satirical targets including the biblical rapture and reality television. Each of the main actors has his moment in the spotlight.

Naturally, the concept runs out of gas before the finish line, but at least there’s an effort to keep the material fresh — more random than repetitive — even if it’s wildly hit-and-miss by nature.

This Is the End winds up as a bold experiment of sorts. That it defies expectations only adds to its appeal, especially for fans of its primary participants.

Rated R, 107 minutes.