So… it's the end of the world right?
Which happens to be the title of this SyFy channel epic, 'End
of the World', and basically the only lifeline you have to
extending life at the end of the world is your beat up
conversion van. Often, this van doesn't start, and this
usually occurs at the most inopportune times, such as being
attacked by crazed mobs or being overrun by murderous dust
storms. Thus, armed this knowledge, and fully
recognizing that doing what we are going to suggest is bad for
the environment, but perhaps we should leave the van
running? I don't know, just throwing that out there for
your consumption. Nonetheless, as ridiculous as that
situation might be, it
their thirties to look elsewhere for
potential mates. Which I think Selena was going to do,
but then the evil space neutrinos starting to descend upon the
earth with a vengeance, completely disintegrating people and
wrecking stuff, which is going to put that on hold.
Maybe forever.
However, as bad and as apocalyptic as these space neutrinos
might be, if there was a group of losers prepared such an
event, Owen, Steve and Leonard are these losers. They
have end of the world survival kits, they have caboodles of
knowledge… from movies they saw… on how to behave in these
situations, and they also have Dr. Walter Brown (Brad Dourif)
on speed dial. It probably would help if they had a
working vehicle, but we're gonna stop beating that dead
horse. Dr. Walter Brown is the preeminent expert on…
hell… I forget… but he would know how to fix this
situation. If he wasn't locked up in the local mental
ward, his crime… looking like Brad Dourif. Come on now,
if you saw Brad Dourif and you didn't know he was Brad Dourif,
you would assume he just escaped from the looney bin.
The situation for our heroes is a daunting one, first we have
to find Selena who might be dead, next we have to avoid the
mad mobs, then we have to outwit Owen's witless and douchey
cousin Max (Mark Hildreth) then we have to break Dr. Brown out
of a super low security mental ward so he can save the
Earth. How are we going to save the Earth from evil
space neutrinos? If you said 'Nuke the sumbitch'… then
you've seen a disaster movie. Move to the front of the
class.
I have to hand it to Mr. Monroe and his team behind 'End of
the World' as these filmmakers have crafted a film that
doesn't take itself all that serious, but also strikes a
delicate balance in being just serious enough to avoid being
complete buffoonery, which almost works to perfection.
Almost. So while there is a certain amount of 'tongue in
cheekiness' going on in 'End of the World', when granny gets
incinerated or when various objects fall from the sky to crush
semi-major characters, and that's going to happen a lot in
this movie, that's still pretty serious stuff.
Also working for 'End of the World' is that clearly this is a
movie, without shame or fear of recrimination, plays to fans
of the genre of disaster movies, and you have to appreciate
that. I mean you don't have
to appreciate I guess, but we here at the FCU, who have seen
about as many disaster movies as anybody ever, certainly
appreciate it. The performances were pretty good, as
most everybody in this movie was in on the joke, and overall
we enjoyed our time spent with 'End of the World'.
Now there were times when the movie dragged a little, meaning
I did fall asleep, but that could be because I'm getting older
and I tend to watch movies in bed late at night. Nah,
that couldn't be it. That's crazy talk, they needed to
pep it up a little bit in the middle. And of course one
might question why it's up to video clerks in Canada to save
the Earth as opposed to some kind of legitimate response from
the world community, or even more pressing, the ease at which
it is to acquire launch codes to set off a nuclear
missile. I mean my man can launch a nuclear
missile but he can't remember to keep his broken down van
running. Come on now.
But we did enjoy our time with 'End of the World', almost to
the point we don't even have to use our SyFy curve to justify
our enjoyment of it. B- without the curve, a solid A
with the Sci-Fi curve generously applied.
will be difficult for me to completely crap
on director Steven R. Monroe's 'End of the World' as it deftly
combines the sublime and the ridiculous while also having its
heart in the right place.
Owen (Greg Grunberg), Steve (Neil Grayston) and Leonard
(Amitai Marmorstein) are three happy-go-lucky Canadians, I
think, running a video store. But then maybe they're not
Canadians because later on they're going to need access to a
nuke and I don't think Canada has a nuclear program. I
could be mistaken there though. Regardless, Owen, Steve
and Leonard do have us a little concerned since they do own a
video store, which in itself is
an indication that these cats lack a bit of
future vision, plus I do believe that their video store only
specializes in disaster movies. I also noticed that at
no point in this movie did this video store of theirs have any
customers, but that being said, if I didn't have bills to pay
and mouths to feed, I too would own a video store.
Owen, I guess by default is the hot one of the crew, has a hot
girlfriend in Selena (Caroline Cave), but hot women in their
thirties whose boyfriends work in video stores and tend to
forget their birthdays usually results in a situation that
forces hot women in
