Rapture-Palooza

Craig Robinson is about the only thing in this film worth seeing IMO, as I have yet to see one of his performances that he is not fully committed to, and just plain funny.

Funny.

That's what I expected in this film, however, it fails to deliver.

With a premise like the "rapture", there is all kinds of room for some serious comedy, but this film wastes that opportunity, and instead seems to make the actors take the irritating / idiotic approach to their roles, and in the delivery of their supposedly "funny" lines.

The actors deliver their lines, and react to events in the film, in a way that can only be described as "corny", ridiculous, and just plain irritating. Instead of sympathizing with the characters, I found myself hoping they would be "removed" so as to save me from having to watch them any further on the screen.

The ONLY actor that seems to know how to deliver a comedic line is Craig Robinson, but he is simply overwhelmed by the inferior comedic performances of the rest of the cast.

This film just didn't work for me, and I highly doubt it will work for you either.

/shrug

Don't say you haven't been warned.

4 of 10 stars.

When I first heard of this movie, I was very intrigued by the idea and the cast. But I wasn't ready for the disappointment, that I was going to meet. The (poorly written) jokes almost never hit, which is the worst thing, that can happen for a comedy of this kind. The cast did, what they could do with the material, but it just wasn't enough. The awkward scenes between Robinson and Kendrick was just that: awkward. Not funny. And that is a shame, because these are actors, who normally make laugh pretty hard. The highpoint of the movie for me, was Rob Cordry and John Michael Higgins, who stood for a couple of laughs each. 2 stars for the cast, and 2 stars for the concept, is all that I can give.

The summer of 2013 saw two big Rapture-themed comedies released, This Is the End and The World's End. Well, apparently, Rapture-Palooza was a third, but you probably never heard of it. It was actually released a few days before This Is the End in a few theaters, but it disappeared with little note and ended up on Netflix (is it even on video?). No surprise, really, as it isn't very good. It's not awful, though. Anna Kendrick stars, so it probably couldn't be really terrible. She and John Francis Daley (who played Sam Weir on Freaks and Geeks) star as a dorky young couple who stayed on Earth after the Rapture. Craig Robinson (who also co-starred in This Is the End) plays the Antichrist. When he catches sight of Kendrick, he falls for her, so she and Daley decide to put an end to him. There are actually a good handful of big laughs here, but for every joke that works there are at least two that don't. It seems to fall back on random swearing when things start to slow down (Craig Robinson is particularly disappointing here, since that seems to be his whole schtick). That said, my favorite gag in the movie is probably the foul-mouthed crows. Rob Corddry, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, Tyler Labine, Ana Gasteyer, Thomas Lennon, Ken Jeong and John Michael Higgins co-star.

Just like the predicted Rapture of 2012 (as prophesied by Ronald Weinland of the apocalypticist COG-PKG), end of the world comedy Rapture Palooza proves to be something of a non-event.

Despite a potentially very funny premise, and a promising start (the slo-mo credits sequence is surprisingly stylish), the film is extremely hit and miss, with the majority of gags being misses. Much of the humour relies on smut and profanity, which I have no problem with, but when I fail to find a vagina joke funny, we definitely have a problem!

To make matters worse, the whole production has an air of cheapness about it, particularly the special effects scenes which look like someone knocked them out quickly in After Effects on their iMac (I suspect this may not be far from the truth).

Overall, this is very much like that other terrible rapture themed comedy of 2013, This Is The End, only none of its stars are anywhere near as obnoxious as Seth Rogen.

3/10, plus an extra point for getting Anna Kendrick into that white dress (which distracted me slightly from the dire comedy).

Let me start off by saying there's no need to go see this in the theater. It's Netflix material, for a rainy day or when you want something light and entertaining. The story: the rapture is finally there. Lindsey (Anna Kendrick) and her boyfriend Ben ( John Francis Daley) are non- believers so they remain on earth. The Anti-Christ (Craig Robinson) settles in Seattle (of all places) and wants to have sex with Lindsey. So Ben and Lindsey set up a plan to take him down. In the end God (Ken Jeong) shows up and get's into a fight with the Anti Christ. Owh, will the world survive? Are you enthralled? Probably not. The plot is nothing special. The beginning of the movie is probably the best. Some funny bits. A lot of cursing, vulgar talk, pot smoking sexual remarks etc. Normally I'm all for this, but here it all seemed a bit forced. The end was uncreative, horrible dialogue, uninspired acting. I don't blame the actors, they weren't given much and did the best they could. I love Anna Kendrick and will probably watch anything she's in, but she cannot lift this up to a higher level. She was almost apathetic with the world coming to an end and doing this movie. The white dress looked good on her though... John Francis Daley, well he just gets typecast. Always playing doofy characters, this time is no exception. Robinson making me laugh the most, but the humor isn't sophisticated or anything. I thought the trailer was promising, the setup was promising as if it was going to be like Zombieland or something, which was a great movie. However, I was mildly disappointed. It was entertaining, not hilarious.