No, not the Seth Rogen/James Franco vehicle This is the End but the long-awaited finale of Edgar Wright's Cornetto trilogy. Is it a worthy conclusion after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz?
While I personally am not as hardcore of a fanboy as apparently a good chunk of other folks out there I still really, really liked Shaun and Fuzz. Their off-kilter humor mixed with a genuine bromance and wrapped in neatly executed genre movies was a breath of fresh air. Unsurprisingly, The World's End takes a similar approach.
Star Simon Pegg (who is to most people known as the guy who pops up in every other J.J. Abrams movie) plays Gary King, a guy in his forties who is desperately stuck in his glorious teenage years. His nostalgia for the one legendary night when he and four of his friends failed to finish the Golden Mile, twelve pints in twelve pubs in one night, ties him to the past and keeps him from growing up. To have Pegg play this character is a change of pace as he was playing the straight man both in Fuzz and Shaun while best buddy Nick Frost was left to play the wacky one. Here the roles are reversed, which we find out once Frost's Andy is introduced who's grown up to become a stiff workaholic. Together with the other guys (Paddy Considine's Steven, Eddie Marsan's Peter and Martin Freeman's Oliver) Gary tries to finish what they started more than twenty years ago, the Golden Mile.
Once all the characters are introduced and have returned to their sleepy British hometown the comedy kicks into a higher gear. While Pegg undoubtedly is the center of attention and gets most of the laughs, the other guys have their moments to shine as well. Most of their hilarity results from the stark contrast between Pegg who still behaves like a 17 year old and his well established working friends. Although this contrast is technically just a plot device for some high jinks, the script is not afraid to paint three dimensional characters that resonate with the audience.
However, over the course of the movie it emerges that the heart of the movie is the relationship between Frost and Pegg. We learn why Andy has initially so much contempt for Gary, what caused their friendship to break and how they both dealt with their lives in the aftermath. In the wake of Shaun and Fuzz it's these two guys' relationship that ties it all together, even when it turns out that their little hometown has been taken over by extraterrestrial robots. Wait, I didn't talk about that yet?
Yes, so The World's End turns into a genre movie, in this case science-fiction (just as Shaun of the Dead turned into a horror movie and Hot Fuzz turned into a buddy cop movie). When the threat is established (and we realize that it's a riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers) we are treated to a whole bunch of fighting scenes where the robots get taken out by our five heroes. It's at that point when the film slows down a bit. The character interplay takes a backseat to the action which is fun initially but becomes somewhat redundant at times. We also get a throw-away Pierce Brosnan cameo as their former teacher (which unfortunately isn't as awesome as it sounds). Luckily, the film regains its footing and we are treated to a hilarious finale at the last pub, The World's End. Without giving too much away but the ultimate conclusion had the same WTF effect that the genius The Cabin in the Woods had on me last year.
Interestingly the film sent out conflicting messages. Initially it spouted that you can't live in the past, that you have to grow up and "join society" as Nick Frost says in the movie. But then in the end it turns the tables and openly comes out and says that it's okay to be a fuck-up and that everybody has the right to be and do whatever they want, no matter how strong the peer pressure. I don't really see that as an issue but as a recurring theme of the Wright/Pegg/Frost trilogy, full of man-children living in a world that forces them to mature, although they'd rather play Playstation (which they do in Shaun of the Dead), reenact scenes from Keanu Reeves cheese fest Point Break (which they do in Hot Fuzz) or just go out binge drinking (which they do in The World's End). In that regard their films are demented Peter Pan fantasies for our generation, don't grow up, always be a child. Is that a "good" message? You'll be the judge. It definitely doesn't change my opinion that The World's End is the most entertaining film I've seen so far in 2013.
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