Countdown to the Oscars: My Favorite Movie Scene of 2013

It’s hard out there for women in Hollywood. It’s hard for them to simply show up in movies. As Linda Holmes noted, with an understandable flair for the dramatic, on NPR this past summer: “In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn't a documentary or a cartoon — you can't. You cannot. There are not any.” She was not suggesting there were no movies featuring women, but rather there were no movies featured specifically about women. Because once women do appear in movies, it becomes that much more difficult for them to genuinely live and breathe on their own terms, to not be singularly defined by the movie’s men, and to not be objectified. It is a serious and deep-seated issue worthy of incisive cinematic commentary, and who knew arguably 2013’s bro-iest movie would be the one to do it?

“This Is The End” was a virtual silver screen invasion of Judd Apatow’s army, a bunch of movie acting chums getting together and playing themselves, reminiscent of a “movie” you might have shot with your friends in high school on Dad’s camcorder but with higher production value and more A-list cameos. Threaded throughout the party experience, however, is yet another storybook tale of bromance, Jay Baruchel flying to Los Angeles to visit BFF Seth Rogen, only to realize they have grown apart. This is crystallized when Seth drags him to a party at James Franco’s house, stocked with old reliables like Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson, before the apocalypse breaks out on the front lawn and forces these dudes to bond (and deal with Danny McBride). Boys will be boys, even when under fire from the rapture.

It is telling, though, who is at and what takes place during James Franco's classic rager. Everyone made a big to-do about Michael Cera’s wonky cameo, and he is funny, but he is primarily there to be rhapsodized by Mindy Kaling and get slapped by Rihanna after he’s objectified her. Good on Rihanna for standing up for herself but, hey, couldn’t she and Mindy Kaling have had a moment to chat around James Franco’s cheese wheel about, I dunno, gender equality on the Warner Bros. back lot? Seems like a fairly typical Bechdel Test failing pseudo-frat party, no?

From there, "This Is The End" morphs into a cinematic bottle episode, as our sextet of Hollywood glitterati fend off (ignore) the burgeoning apocalypse by getting high and arguing over who gets to eat the last Milky Way. Even with Jay Baruchel's neurosis about where he belongs in the group intertwined with the narrative, this still feels like a $32 million excuse for a few friends to get together for a few weeks and hang out. Until Emma Watson busts through the front door with an axe, that is, at which point "This Is The End" suddenly becomes spectacular and a spectacularly funny social commentary.

First off, it's important to note that Emma Watson, playing herself like everyone else, English accent in tow, has apparently managed to survive the catastrophic events taking place all by her winsome self. This is telling, and it is telling because while, say, James Franco cannot even bear to part with his sleeping mask and satin sheets, Emma Watson has been going toe-to-toe with Satan and his minions and winning. She’s already got more figurative balls than any of the leading men.

But now, busting her way into the ex-Oscar host’s boarded-up home, she is just searching for a place to crash, just for a few hours. The guys gladly offer a bedroom. She enters, exhausted, and closes the door. The guys, meanwhile, stand right outside and debate “the elephant in the room”. That is, they are six men in the midst of the Apocalypse. With a lone woman. They don't want to emit a vibe. A certain kind of vibe. A vibe no one wants to namecheck because to say it aloud immediately renders you dubious in the public's eye. But finally Danny McBride says it because of course he does. “A rapey vibe.” Eeeeeee. Of course, none of them want to give off a rapey vibe because none of them have any intention of having their way with Emma Watson. Alas, once the word “rape” is broached the entire animal house becomes so desperate not to offend that they inevitably, inadvertently blunder right across the line.

"The joke's on all of them," Alyssa Rosenberg writes at Think Progress, "and on all of us." She notes how the joke is not based "on the idea that it would be hilarious for Watson to get raped" but "how hard it is for men and women to talk about rape." This is entirely true, a finely-tuned deconstruction of a sensitive topic too often discussed with little forethought or odd irreverence. Because in their specific attempt to avoid being offensive, the guys succeed mightily in offending Emma Watson when she overhears their blabbering mouths from inside her temporary resting spot and becomes concerned for her safety. So she re-hoists her axe, steals their supplies and makes her escape. And this is why the sequence goes beyond just its spot-on analysis of untoward rape jokes and speaks directly to the pervasive woman problem in Hollywood.

Here is a skilled actress playing herself as a consummate badass consciously portrayed as being physically and mentally tougher than the boys. The screenplay, however, deliberately turns her presence into “the elephant in the room”, which is to say it does not know how to deal with her presence. So, it panics and immediately writes her right back out of the story.

Consider the scene reduced to its essential stage directions: Woman Enters Movie. Woman Is Immediately Objectified. Woman Exits Movie. In a few brief minutes of screen time, "This Is The End" and its bros have broken down and pointed out the disturbing and repetitive cycle of how Hollywood chooses to treat its women. Show up, be pretty, let us talk about you, and then go away.

Then again, the closing sequence set in a white-shrouded heaven populated by the Backstreet Boys, a bunch of front-and-center dudes and background women in revealing clothing functioning solely as arm and eye candy, might suggest that Hollywood's vision of eternal paradise is just as chauvinistic as its vision of reality, and that our bros at the controls have not even paid heed to their own lesson.

This Is The End

A couple famous actors, whose names we will get to, are stranded in a Hollywood mansion in the wake of a massive earthquake that has rocked La-La-Land. But is it an earthquake? Or is it something else? One actor suggests it might be a situation straight outta the Book of Revelation, Judgment Day. "You mean," says the other actor, "like 'Terminator 2?'" We have reached a point where even the Apocalypse - for real - is best seen through the filter of pop culture. Traditionally at the movies, characters in the face of the end of times seek solace in the arms of their loved ones. In "This Is The End" our ostensible heroes get high and film a fake sequel for "Pineapple Express."

This is because the Apocalypse is happening right outside James Franco's (playing himself because everybody plays themselves!) sleek self-designed home where he is hosting a debauched party to celebrate its christening. Anyone who claims to dislike "Ocean's Twelve" on account of its insidery, back-slapping overtones may take umbrage with this sprawling, wondrous mess of who's-who cameos - from Jason Segel explaining the wear and tear of filming "How I Met Your Mother" to Michael Cera, brilliantly, running off the rails and playing a wild-child coke head. But, I dare say, that might be the aim of Seth Rogen, who co-stars while also writing and directing with Evan Goldberg.

Not for nothing does the cavernous sinkhole on James Franco's lawn quickly swallow up so many vain stars who had just been feigning nice to one another (or snorting coke). James Franco points out his own artwork on his own walls ("Geeks. '99"). Craig Robinson sports an elegant towel over his shoulder for most of the film bearing the title "Mr. Robinson". Jonah Hill, in a performance that finds all sorts of subtle layers of uncomfortableness, pretends to be Jay Baruchel's biggest fan even though he secretly despises him.

The through line of "This Is The End" is meant to be the deteriorating friendship of Jay and Seth. As it opens, Jay has flown in to L.A. to visit Seth. Jay is both uptight and insecure - uptight because he is a true blue Canadian who can't stand the vapidity of Hollywood and insecure because his best pal Seth has gone off and struck it big in this same place he can't stand. And Jay turns even more uptight and insecure when Seth drags him to James Franco's housewarming party. In a way, I think, Jay Baruchel is meant to stand in for us, the outsiders who cast wary eyes toward movie stars and all their eccentric, self-absorbed shenanigans even as we cannot help but get enough of them.

But once Rapture happens, the two pals barricade themselves in James Franco's house with its owner and Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson. And, eventually, Danny McBride, who wasn't even invited to the party but showed up anyway. McBride is an actor whose brazen, foul-mouthed, several-hundred-yards-over-the-edge tactics I admit I positively cannot stand, and which actually makes him so brilliant here. Is there a worse person to get stuck with in an Apocalyptic outbreak than Danny McBride?

That the electricity still works - notice the functioning alarm clocks amidst all the candles - and they still apparently stick to a routine bedtime suggests that this is almost an adolescent fantasy, end of the world by way of a bro-laden slumber party. And, make no mistake, it is bro-laden. Perhaps the film's most clever sequence involves Emma Watson, a spritely badass, battering her way into James Franco's house with an axe in search of shelter only to flee when she overhears, and slightly misunderstands, a discussion break out over which one is most likely to rape her.

I know what you're thinking, but watch the scene closely. Female Actress enters movie. Female Actress is immediately objectified. Female Actress departs movie. If there has been a better satirical tangent on the depressing plight of women in Hollywood in recent times, I have yet to see it.

Admittedly, most of the humor does not quite strike that harshly. Most of it is what you would expect from Team Apatow, and most of it is quite funny. (My favorite line in a movie so far in 2013 involves James Franco comparing the Holy Trinity to Neapolitan ice cream. I mean, my God.) That is, after all, the primary intention of "This Is The End" and, gratefully, aside from one humorous diversion into Jay Baruchel making like Max von Sydow in "The Exorcist", it refrains from full-on parody and relies on generating its own humor. Respect.

It can be juvenile, sure, and gross and stupid and go so far, in the grand scheme, to suggest a certain inertia of its leading men. This is what A.O. Scott saw, writing for The New York Times: "I think they know it's time to move on." Eh, maybe, maybe not. Clumsily, "This Is The End" imparts the wisdom of Doing Unto Others As You Would Want Done Unto You. This, as it turns out, is the ticket into heaven, and it comes across here like learning the secret trick in a video game.

Eternal paradise ends up resembling, well, a party at James Franco's house.