Rapture-Palooza (2013)

Dave’s 3-Word Review:
Not for Christians

For some odd reason, R-rated comedies seem to be a bit delayed when it comes to the end of the world. It would seem more appropriate for these movies to be released during the winter season of last year, but hey…they are here now, and all being released coincidentally around the same time. Obviously, the big one is This is the End, and then there is David Cross’s It’s a Disaster, and Anna Kendrick’s Rapture-Palooza. This isn’t even the entire list, but it marks some of the main ones. Now, the word rapture should strike a chord for you, religious or not. This is one of the only R-rated end of the world comedies that actually takes the biblical apocalypse into consideration – and uses the bible as their primary source of humor. That’s right folks, if you’re religious, don’t check this movie out solely based on the title…you’d hate it. Athiests would like it more.

To get a solid idea of what this movie is all about – it’s about Anna Kendrick’s character () and her boyfriend, Ben (Sweets) as they go through life after the rapture has hit the world. When “The Beast” in all his feminist glory (Craig Robinson) asks her to marry him, she and Ben must find a way to defeat him. According to the Bible, there is a way to lock him up for 1,000 years. So they bust out the dog kennel and get to work.

Throughout the movie, these people will be cracking jokes just about everything the bible has to offer, but mostly found in Revolution. Why 1,000 years, why not forever? Oh, you get mad for someone cutting in line in heaven after you have been raptured, you are then un-raptured for judging in heaven. Why have blood rain? It makes no logical sense, it’s just disgusting. Be prepared for a lot of cracks on religion, because it is clear that whoever made this was not even close to being religious, maybe even against Christianity…(being actively against Christianity is the original description of satanic, so you can almost call this a satanic movie. Fun fact.)

You can’t just throw out the target audience, though. Clearly, this film wasn’t trying to please the Christian, so the Christians weren’t the target audience. Athiests and Agnostic individuals would probably be able to be defined as the target audience. So was it any good for them? It was definitely better for them, but where it lacked this time wasn’t on moral or ethical standpoints, it was just on technical things. This is one of those movies where it’s just repulsive because every other word is practically an “F” bomb or crude sexual innuendo. Too much of that and the movie stops being a relevant movie, or even funny. What I mean by technical is that it is redundant. Using anything too much in the making of a film can get old. Unfortunately, this film does get quite old after a while.

Rapture-Palooza definitely has its moments of sheer hilarity. You may actually find yourself laughing out loud here and there, but that just isn’t  true the entire movie. The cussing crows and the weird talking cockroaches with faces just didn’t make any sense.

To be fair, this movie had a lot of promise, because we really don’t get enough secular films about the Rapture. Are Christian interpretations really that bad? I’d like to think that they aren’t, but they just don’t have the finances or writing freedom to make the Rapture something truly unique. What would a rapture look like to an Athiest where he isn’t bombarded by people with Bibles every minute of the movie? It could be a real thriller.  Maybe Nicolas Cage will do something with the remake of Left Behind.

Anyways, there really isn’t anything special about this one. Thankfully there are more options for R-rated end of the world comedies. Rapture-Palooza is released on Blu-Ray and DVD on Aug. 20! Check it out!