Evan Goldberg
48 connections found
Filmography
View:
Connections, in both directions
With Rogen, along with James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Emma Watson, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Michael Cera and others all playing themselves -- or at least their perception of how Hollywood and the public view them and their personas -- the film also comes off as a big inside joke as mixed with a "Scary Movie" style spoof of disaster and horror films, complete with an extended sequence lifted from and inspired by a film that was made before many of those involved were born, "The Exorcist."
That their fixation on movies only has them prepared to spout pop culture references and, say, deal with demonic possession by quoting "The Exorcist"?
There's an extended homage to The Exorcist that may be obvious but turns out to be really damn funny anyway.
In some ways this is just a creepier, slightly funnier horror-pic spoof than anything in the recently resurrected “Scary Movie” franchise; along with its references to “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist,” the film spends a considerable amount of time elucidating prophecies in the book of Revelation, often with an impressively straight face.
If Rogen and Goldberg want a hit as big as “Ghostbusters” (another film, along with “The Exorcist” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” that this one borrows from), they should remember that the Bill Murray comedy didn’t keep putting the plot on hold for long stretches of improv.
The obvious nods to " The Exorcist " and "Rosemary's Baby" co-exist with a hilarious examination of the familiar dynamics of a group of friends.
(And if it's too on-the-nose for you, maybe you can impress your friends by spotting the Rosemary's Baby nod that happens elsewhere.)
In some ways this is just a creepier, slightly funnier horror-pic spoof than anything in the recently resurrected “Scary Movie” franchise; along with its references to “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist,” the film spends a considerable amount of time elucidating prophecies in the book of Revelation, often with an impressively straight face.
And just when things start to drag a little, This Is the End pays vulgar homage to Rosemary’s Baby and the monsters arrive, leading to situations such as a gross-out soccer game with a severed head.
If Rogen and Goldberg want a hit as big as “Ghostbusters” (another film, along with “The Exorcist” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” that this one borrows from), they should remember that the Bill Murray comedy didn’t keep putting the plot on hold for long stretches of improv.
I will note, however, that the film's ripoff of the demonic impregnation scene in Rosemary's Baby is considerably more horrifying than the original.
The obvious nods to " The Exorcist " and "Rosemary's Baby" co-exist with a hilarious examination of the familiar dynamics of a group of friends.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced The Interview (2014)
Themes Plot Visuals
Oppressive, fascistic dictatorships have proved fertile ground for comic filmmakers from Chaplin and Lubitsch to Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino (whose “Inglourious Basterds” is another obvious reference point here).
So yeah, I did like this silly, over-the-top yet audacious movie that imagines the assassination of Kim, much in the same way Quentin Tarantino imagined the assassination of Hitler in “Inglourious Basterds.”
If you enjoyed the climactic shoot-outs in movies like “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained,” then you’ll enjoy where “The Interview” goes in the same way.
The low-humor high concept—which seems every bit as marijuana-inspired as Rogen & Goldberg's last collaboration with Franco, This Is the End—arguably one-ups Inglourious Basterds for pure audaciousness.
Look, Quentin Tarantino killed Hitler in Inglourious Basterds and the neo-Nazis stayed quiet.
Sausage Party (2016)
Directed by Greg Tiernan
influenced by This Is the End (2013), The Interview (2014)
Themes
Like most of the voluminous comedy output from Rogen and his producing and writing partner Evan Goldberg (whose collaborations include the “Neighbors” movies, “This Is the End” and “Superbad” ), “Sausage Party” has a stoned or unhinged quality that makes it seem less like a calculated commodity and more like the results of a late-night dare.
Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen – the guys behind Superbad, Pineapple Express, This Is the End – are the reprobates responsible for Sausage Party and it’s fair to say if you like their previous work, you’ll love this.
As with Rogen and Golberg's previous comedies — including "Superbad," "This is the End" and "Pineapple Express" — "Sausage Party" fills its basket with every food pun, sight gag and sexual innuendo you can imagine and a few overt sex jokes you won't be able to unsee.
Like “This Is the End,” Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Rogen’s 2013 apocalypse comedy, it embraces the darkness of its premise and answers despair with bursts of nasty, knowing silliness.
With a story idea credited to Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, longtime screenwriting and producing partners, and Jonah Hill, who broke out in their autobiographical 2007 film Superbad, and a script by Rogen, Goldberg, and The Night Before co-screenwriters Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir, Sausage Party falls in line with other Rogen-fronted comedies like This Is the End, The Interview, and Neighbors: an inspired premise, spottily funny execution, and eye-rolling gender and cultural stereotypes windmilling at subversiveness.
"This is the End," another Rogen/Goldberg comedy featuring (like this one) the talents of Jonah Hill, James Franco, Michael Cera and others, was notably thoughtful about those questions too.
With Rogen, along with James Franco, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Emma Watson, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Michael Cera and others all playing themselves -- or at least their perception of how Hollywood and the public view them and their personas -- the film also comes off as a big inside joke as mixed with a "Scary Movie" style spoof of disaster and horror films, complete with an extended sequence lifted from and inspired by a film that was made before many of those involved were born, "The Exorcist."
In some ways this is just a creepier, slightly funnier horror-pic spoof than anything in the recently resurrected “Scary Movie” franchise; along with its references to “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist,” the film spends a considerable amount of time elucidating prophecies in the book of Revelation, often with an impressively straight face.
If you like dick jokes, urine jokes, the "Scary Movie" series and Danny McBride turning his usual brand of sociopathic humor up to 11, this might be the movie for you.
If Rogen and Goldberg want a hit as big as “Ghostbusters” (another film, along with “The Exorcist” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” that this one borrows from), they should remember that the Bill Murray comedy didn’t keep putting the plot on hold for long stretches of improv.
Seth Rogan and friends manage to do what even Ivan Reitman couldn’t do himself: duplicate the comedic formula that made Ghostbusters so irresistible.
…which feels a bit like This Is the End redux. “Celebrities saying stuff that is wildly out of character with their public image” was funny 13 years ago (I also enjoyed This Is the End!)
It all plays like a Hollywood-in-hiding fantasy in which the creative class’s response to fascism is to gather in mansions and wait for someone else to solve it, quite obviously paying tribute to This is the End, down to the talent involved.
But it’s also … suddenly a Seth Rogen movie? This scene feels straight out of This Is the End, with several actors playing the most selfish and cynical versions of themselves…
Baruchel hates LA in the same way Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer hated it in Annie Hall , but what he encounters tops his worst expectations.
The 1992 film The Player assembled a huge cast of famous actors to play versions of themselves in director Robert Altman’s witty and vicious satire of Hollywood.
With its roaming camera (Rogen makes his directorial debut alongside longtime screenwriting partner Evan Goldberg) and sharp ensemble cast, it has the feel of a younger, fouler version of Robert Altman’s The Player.
As a result, This Is the End, in addition to being the funniest film of the year, is also the best buddies-versus-the-apocalypse film since Simon Pegg and Nick Frost battled zombie hordes to make it back to the Winchester in 2004’s Shaun of the Dead.
Taking a page from Shaun of the Dead , This Is the End balances humor, horror, and sentiment.
The film plays out like “Shaun of the Dead” with half the wit, double the filth and enough juvenile humor to make Seth MacFarlane blush.
Like Shaun Of The Dead, This Is The End lightly satirizes its protagonists’ stoner/slacker obliviousness by having them not notice that society is being ripped asunder until an apocalyptic event is well under way.
The main difference—and it's not to be underestimated—is that This Is the End is profane in the extreme, an R-rated stoner comedy gleefully grafted onto a "splatstick" horror picture, the next evolutionary step for the in-bred hipster comedy world that thrilled to Shaun of the Dead.
It’s Tropic Thunder crossed with Shaun of the Dead with just a dollop of Being John Malkovich.
Unlike the raunchy Wedding Crashers, it's rated PG-13 instead of R, it avoids the strain of mean-spiritedness that's in vogue in modern comedy, and its leads are now more comfortable making jokes about 1953's Stalag 17 and 1983's Flashdance than anything from the brave new world of 2013.
All of the above should know better.A film that has the gall to insult " Your Highness " and then proceed to be just as desperate and cloying as that misbegotten medieval comedy, "This Is the End" reminds of 2010's much-maligned alien invasion thriller " Skyline ," only with fewer laughs and imagination.
But as The Interview proved in 2014, controversy does not necessarily translate to ticket sales.
Much like when Sony pulled Seth Rogen and James Franco’s “The Interview” a few years back fearing an international incident, after finally seeing the film it’s hard to imagine anyone ever getting worked up over such an adolescent little trifle.
Nowadays, that sensationalism comes from politics rather than gimmicks: 2014’s The Interview was virtually canceled in the wake of North Korean agitation, before finally being released to a ho-hum reception.
Normally in disaster comedies, the sequences of destruction are brief and cheesy (to be fair, there aren't many comparisons unless you count unintentional parodies like Independence Day).
Even worse, Rogen and Goldberg give up almost immediately once the crap hits the fan, killing off three-quarters of the cast as a lazy, throwaway afterthought and then sending the survivors indoors for a patience-testing, claustrophobic chamber piece that makes light of rape, includes the kicking-around of a severed head, and tosses in a demonic possession subplot for no reason other than to show how much better, believe it or not, the spoofing of an exorcism was done in 2001's " Scary Movie 2 ."None of the cast, save for perhaps the butt-kicking, ax-swinging Emma Watson (2012's " The Perks of Being a Wallflower ") in a cute but too-small part, take themselves seriously, and that is the true death knell of comedy.
There's a certain creative ambition in the notion of doing something like The Trigger Effect or Night of the Living Dead with a cast entirely made up of comedy stars poking fun at their own base human natures, monstrously exacerbated by privilege.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Directed by Larry Charles
influenced This Is the End (2013)
Rogen would've done well to learn from Sacha Baron Cohen (he was a writer on "Da Ali G Show") whose trio of films -- "Bruno," "Borat" and "The Dictator" -- all run between 80 and 90 minutes max but usually on the shorter end of that spectrum, and for the better.
Even the grottiest bits have a way of hitting their marks and darting onward, the way they did in "Borat."
There's a certain creative ambition in the notion of doing something like The Trigger Effect or Night of the Living Dead with a cast entirely made up of comedy stars poking fun at their own base human natures, monstrously exacerbated by privilege.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)
Directed by Tom Gormican
influenced by The Interview (2014), This Is the End (2013)
Plot Themes
It was only a few years ago that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg made the controversial The Interview – a movie also featuring a celebrity who gets embroiled in a government operation – and while Tom Gormican’s movie makes moves to shake up one-to-one comparisons, they are mostly obvious choices that audiences will see coming from the start.
It’s a kick to see Cage joining the long parade of actors who have played versions of themselves in the last few decades, from Neil Patrick Harris in the “Harold & Kumar” movies to Bill Murray in “Zombieland” to the cast of “This Is the End” to Keanu Reeves in “Always Be My Maybe.”
Two such examples hit theaters within days of each other: The Internship, reuniting Wedding Crashers stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, and This Is the End, featuring same-circle friends James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and many more.