THIS IS THE END: The cult of celebrity plays to hysterical turns in This is the End.

Admit it: you’ve wondered, when you find yourself pondering the multifarious endtimes we’re living in, just which celebrities will survive whatever apocalypse we’re overdue for. When New York is reduced to random protons by a passing alien starfleet, which Law and Order cast members will make it out alive? When a zombie plague sweeps over London, which members of the royal family will have to destroy the diseased brains of which others in order to prevail? And when the 9.9 earthquake or crustal displacement or solar flares or the Yellowstone supervolcano takes out Los Angeles, my god, the celebrity body count will be unthinkable. Who among our Famous Elite will live to see the morning after?

Now it can be told, in the case of one particular sort of apocalypse the nature of which I will not spoil (though it could have been cleverer than it is). This Is the End is the tale of how one celeb posse fares over the course of one horrific night of, erm, horror and devastation and stuff blowing up and sinkholes and running low on booze and bacon, and the even more horrific days that follow.

My god, I love this movie. I, er, died laughing, unlike some of the famous people playing hilarious send-ups of themselves onscreen, who just die. I did not expect this, because I am no fan of this particular posse and have found most of their films desperately unfunny. But I have a new respect for them because they very clearly do not take themselves too seriously and are not above acknowledging just how very terrible much of their output has been.

The posse is the one that has accreted around Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, writers and, here, debuting directors. They wrote Superbad and Pineapple Express and The Watch, movies that have appalled me with their idiocy, though they have not been above throwing me a curveball like The Green Hornet, which is smart and clever and which I really like. And now they have twisted into warped “reality” a story about “Seth Rogen” (Seth Rogen) and his bestie “Jay Baruchel” (Jay Baruchel) who go to a party at the Los Angeles home of “James Franco” (James Franco) on the evening that all hell happens to break loose.

It’s funny because of course James Franco would be one of the celebs to survive the apocalypse. Because what can’t the guy do? It could, in fact, well be part of his latest enormous performance art project to arrange an apocalypse that he would survive in some fashion that would be meta and culturally aware and introspective and a commentary on how we fetishize celebrities. As part of his Ph.D. in Celebrity Studies.

It’s funny because everyone onscreen – also including Jonah Hill as “Jonah Hill” and Craig Robinson as “Craig Robinson” and Michael Cera as “Michael Cera” and Danny McBride as “Danny McBride” – is poking fun at themselves, at their public personas, and at the notion that it’s possible that our perception of a celebrity may be entirely different from the reality of him or her as an actual human being… and how the reality of them as human beings may be somewhat at odds with their ability to endure in “real life” the sorts of things they’ve made a very good living pretending to endure onscreen for our entertainment.

It’s funny because these guys poke a lot of fun at themselves, as in how they fill some post-apocalypse time by making terrible “sequels” to their films now that it’s clear that they’ll never get made by Hollywood thanks to the whole end-of-the-world thing. (Have you been waiting for Pineapple Express II? Here it is, shot on the camcorder from 127 Hours. Franco saves all his props, you see.) The delicious irony of This Is the End does not escape me: It wouldn’t be nearly as funny if I hadn’t seen all their previous shitty movies, and hated them. Though even everyone who loved their previous shitty movies will probably love this, too.

There’s one or two head-scratchers here, such as the one rapey joke that’s actually about rape culture and smacks it good and made me think, “Wow, these guys get it,” until the next rapey joke that’s just weird and icky and straight-up rapey. But mostly End is sweet in ways that the oeuvre of Rogen and Goldberg has tried to be in the past and failed: “Bromance doesn’t stop for the apocalypse” is kind of a nice thing for a movie to be about. For Rogen-and-Goldberg values of “nice,” at least.

THIS IS THE END (3) • Directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen •Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Emma Watson •Rated R • 107 min. •At Century Cinemas Del Monte, Maya Cinemas, Northridge Cinemas