Rapture-palooza: Uh, Good Casting?

Over the weekend, I realized that many of my favorite movies, albums, and people could be described as "bad ideas with brilliant execution" which is a big reversal from where I was in my early 20s, when high-concepts redeemed any lack of actual entertainment or artistic merit. Within a few hours of having this conversation, I wound up in a theater to see a new film from a screenwriter most famous for writing the Bill & Ted films, which I have no idea how to place on that scale. Unfortunately, this new endeavor has too many borrowed ideas and such grotesquely scatter-shot delivery that any redeeming qualities are completely lost.

Rapture-Palooza, off to a bad start with the worst title in recent memory, follows Lindsey (Anna Kendrick) through the Biblical apocalypse. After the ascendance of a billion Christians, so begins the rain of blood, asteroids, talking locusts, zombies, and wraiths, culminating in the rise of the Anti-Christ in the form of a politician played by Craig Robinson. When the Big Bad nukes random cities around the world, he decides to move to the Seattle suburbs. Now he wants Lindsey for his new wife, and it’s up to her and her boyfriend Ben (John Francis Daley) to stop him.

The film starts out promising enough which some impressive visual effects and some fun twists on the established lore, including foul-mouthed locusts and an unemployed wraith workforce who've become stoners. More exciting is the casting, because EVERYONE is in this movie. Rob Corddry as Satan's sycophant, Thomas Lennon as a lawnmower obsessed zombie, Ana Gasteyer as Lindsey's un-raptured mother; Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel, Ken Jeong, Tyler Labine, and more. As a comedy fan it's a very enticing list, and most have meaty roles as opposed to say, Patton Oswalt's single scene in Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World.

Your enthusiasm for the film will quickly wane and it devolves from apocalyptic comedy to crass humor, slut-shaming, dick jokes, and more use of the word "bitches" than punctuation. This is confusing at best, because the script still contains a bounty of comedic gems, especially in throwaway lines that deserved more attention, but it's as if the director told each comedic player to "turn it up to 11" on any statement that a frat boy might shout and hurry through the rest. For example, Rob Corddry has a line defending Satan because he "got rid of the penny" but I could have missed it for litany of profanity and sexual slurs that were all but meaningless. Kendrick seems to be the only actor given opposite instructions on delivery, as her presence and enthusiasm are null. Robinson's Anti-Christ aims for Willy Wonkaesqe but hits a baseness that reveals the film's inherent problem: not understanding the difference between satire and lowest common denominator.

The mess of Rapture-Palooza continues on every level, including random animated sequences meant to enhance the quirk value, a plan for defeating the Devil which is non-sensical at best, a script that slowly devolves in direct proportion to the budget, leading to a single location third act which relies on characters we never found a reason to care about, and a resolution that the film admits doesn't make any sense. It's an uneven attempt from an unknown director, and probably not worth your time when Craig Robinson has a better apocalyptic film coming out later this week.