Rapture-Palooza

The “Rapture,” if you believe in such things, is an end-time fairy tale made up by evangelicals that basically says God is going to pull a Thanos, do a snap, and with that, all the good little boys and girls (and men and women) will vanish from earth, having ascended to heaven, and the rest of us will be left behind, shrugging at each other like “Ooops!”

The rapture has happened and young lovers Lindsey (Anna Kendrick) and Ben (John Francis Daley) have indeed been left behind. The rapture is followed by several plagues, like locusts and blood rain, and the anti-christ’s reign. The anti-christ, who prefers to be called The Beast (Craig Robinson), nukes Chicago and Orlando and threatens to do more, and worse. Whatever he asks, you say yes. That’s just how it is now. Unemployment is high and what little you have can be taken at any moment by the flaming rocks falling from the sky, so to get by you’d better do as you’re asked. And just in case Jesus gets any big ideas about coming back to save humanity (again), The Beast has a really big laser for that.

Anyway, when Lindsey and Ben’s dreams of owning a sandwich cart are crushed, literally, by one of those big flaming rocks, so they have to go to work with Ben’s dad (Rob Corddry), who works for The Beast. Which is how The Beast lays eyes on Lindsey, and decides to take her for himself. This situation suits neither Lindsey nor Ben, so they hatch a plan to rid the Earth of The Beast. One little catch: you can’t kill The Beast, or he comes back as Satan. So the plan involves trapping him, subduing him, and caging him…for one thousand years. It’s a great plan. What could go wrong?

Is this a good movie? It is not. If you like any of the talent involved, you might eke out a few laughs, but you won’t be proud of yourself for it. You have to be smart to pull of satire, and this movie is very, very dumb. It’s crass where it should be incisive, crass where it should be biting, crass where it should be crafty. You get the idea. It’s stoner r-rated raunch and I’m pretty sure the world could live without it.

9 thoughts on “Rapture-Palooza

  1. Robert Jantzen

    Too bad, Anna Kendrick has taken so many great off the wall rolls, starting with Up in the Air which got her a lot of attention, and two hit man sidekick movies: Mr Right, The Accountant, and the Pitch Perfect franchise was fun, no? Then A Simple Favor! I went to a matinee performance at a shopping mall and was alone in the theater! Where was everybody else! Really clever and such delicious viewing. Well, everybody has an offday, or off-movie. 2013 was an unlucky year?

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  2. Tom

    Yeah the only thing I remember about this is Craig Robinson getting electromazapped in the hot tub. I think that’s what happens. I was pretty high at the time so I’m pretty sure I laughed at this.

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  3. James Viscosi

    I wouldn’t say this was a GOOD movie, but we enjoyed it. We watched it during the let’s call it “time period between 2016 and 2020 in America” so we had some fun finding comparisons in it to current events …

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