I’ve been sort of disillusioned with people in general lately, and seeing This is the End did not exactly allay my current disgust with the state of the world. I just got promoted to deputy assistant manager at Burger King, following two years of online classes along with being jostled into taking the head manager’s midriff-challenged daughter to prom. At first I was happy with my newfound socioeconomic clout. I finally make just a hair below the minimum wage of several neighboring states, so I can head down to the mall and blow my newfound WAM on some ironic tee-shirts. Plus, I can finally contribute to the company’s health plan, and will gain full eligibility for the prescription drug benefits by July 2018 (or, if my spouse fails to die by then, I get pushed back to April 2021).

However, what they don’t tell you about being a ranked officer in the BK command structure is that you are the only line of defense between the paying customers and an army of teenage part-timers who are incapable of serving an order of medium onion rings without at least one rogue fry slipped in there. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve had to put an employee on probation because of just this issue alone. What makes it unbearable is that most of these kids are intelligent, with several heading off to Ivy League colleges in the fall, a feat that several of them managed even without a letter of recommendation from me.

So, after a particularly trying day correcting the minor but many grammatical errors committed by our new trainee on the drive-thru, I sit down to watch This is the End. I am unable to jive the incompetence I witness on the job every day with what I see beaming from the projector. Seth Rogen, a man who is uneducated, usually high, and always Canadian, has somehow crafted one of the best comedies to ever grace the silver screen in his quadruple-threat role of writer/director/producer/actor.

To start, Rogen has managed to outdo the vast majority of Hollywood action film directors. This is the End tells the story of the apocalypse as it plays out in the posh neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Crazy stuff happens. People get incinerated, abducted, and crushed by Buicks. All of these sequences are more succinctly and interestingly shot than in the vast majority of big budget productions, where the camera just shakes wildly and tracks nothing in particular to mask the fact that the directors don’t know what they’re doing. This isn’t even an action movie. Yet I’m convinced that Rogen could have played this out as a straight action flick and saved all of the comedy for something else.

Rogen has also put to shame virtually every casting director in the history of Tinseltown. How did he get every relevant comedic personality from the past eight years on screen at once (for a movie shot in post-9/11 New Orleans nonetheless)? I’m sure he’s charming, but it’s doubtful that Rogen is capable of sending a mass e-mail. So maybe assembling a cast just isn’t that difficult, and casting directors aren’t quite worth their seven-figure compensation. This is the End stars the equivalent of a combination of the 1992 and 2012 Dream teams, with Chris Mullin and Anthony Davis getting ejected early on so we can concentrate on the true stars (yes, Michael Cera bites it pretty quick). The headliners are led off by Dave Franco’s big bro, James, a man who has been perpetually high for so long that his entire intellect has been formed while in an altered state; thus, even if he lays off a joint for a few hours, his words and actions are indistinguishable from those he would undertake if he had just lit up. Then there’s Rogen himself, who is just a step below Franco and Method Man on the How High scale. He knows how to party, but can sober up just long enough to pick up Jay Baruchel from the airport in the film’s opening scene. Jonah Hill plays a big part, though I can’t help but worry that he is one stressful argument with a gas station attendant away from relapsing into his obese frame. There’s also Craig Robinson, a black actor who is so loveable, so consistently affable in every role, that he serves as proof, once and for all, that slavery was a mistake. And finally, the man who kicked the devil’s ass when he went down to Georgia, Danny McBride.

This is the End follows the tried but true comedic formula of juxtaposing petty grievances against a backdrop of a much larger problem, revealing the absurdity of the human situation. Doomsday occurs out of nowhere, and yet they can’t help but squabble over the same things that they’ve been squabbling over since earlier in the night when the bass was bumpin’ and the honeyz was rockin’. As in Dr. Strangelove, when Captain Mandrake is short the change needed to call the President and avert nuclear holocaust, the folks In This is the End must figure out how to divide their sole Milky Way bar amongst themselves in order to avert starvation. This is not an unrealistic scenario; if we live in a universe where the Milky Way bar will be eaten, then we must get through the rigmarole of divvying it up accordingly, regardless of the extenuating circumstances in said universe. Civilization can be stubbornly unwilling to give up its grasp on human interactions, even when in its last throes.

The strong, established personalities of all of the characters here make the above formula work as well as it ever has. Rogen’s writing made the whole process sort of easy. Everyone in the movie plays themselves, or at least some sort of pseudo-version of themselves. So he didn’t force anything; he constructed dialogue and subject matter that fit each of the actors’/characters’ strengths. There’s no doubt that a whole bunch of banter was left on the cutting room floor. A lot of garbage would probably be a bad sign for a plot-driven drama, but it’s ok for a movie like this, where the story is secondary to the characters’ interactions in the foreground. Rogen figures out what most writers fail at: if the characters aren’t interesting, the best a movie can be is average, regardless of how good the story is; if the characters are interesting, you leave yourself a huge amount of wiggle room to screw up. He didn’t screw up though. Every scene, every sequence is tightly put together, and there is not a second of waste throughout. The whole thing is comedic gold.

Up until the last three minutes, the movie was great, for sure the best comedy in several years. Then the ending happened. With that, This is the End became a masterpiece. I won’t spoil it, other than telling you that I came five times (exactly).

I’ve heaped a lot of praise on Seth Rogen’s cinematic skills here, so I want to very clear. I am not saying that Rogen is better than Spielberg. I am screaming it from the rooftops for all to hear. Sorry Stevie, Hollywood’s got a new top Jew, and top Canadian (sorry Luc Robitaille). If you don’t enjoy this film, I strongly encourage you to reassess your life. Read a book. Take a trip to Turks and/or Caicos. Upgrade your iPod Nano. Anything. If you prefer, send us your address and I’ll be happy to forward you a Christmas card from a random happy family; their huge smiles will surely turn your frown upside-down.

Rogen has proven that vast stretches of the Hollywood landscape are populated with incompetent chumps. I also now strongly suspect that this ineptitude is pandemic to our society, and that I am not being “anal” by expecting a 100% hit rate on our three-pickles-per-burger policy. Rules are rules. It’s time for me to crack the whip. Rogen showed us that anyone is capable of anything if you put your mind to it, and by golly by the time I’m 40 I swear I’ll be adjusting my clip-on tie for my photo as the new head manager of Burger King #6474.