Dir. Edgar Wright
109 Minutes
Rated R
Watch Trailer
Gary King is living in the past. He's out to re-live the infamous pub crawl that he and his high school buddies never finished back in the day. Although Gary (Simon Pegg) hasn't moved on from his younger days (riding the same car, rocking to the same cassette, wearing the same black overcoat), his friends take some persuading to come along, including Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), Oliver Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), and especially the now-teetotaling Andy Knightley (Nick Frost). The guys all eventually agree to join Gary on this nostalgic trip, reminiscing over past loves (Rosamund Pike), bullies, and teachers. But something is off in their hometown, and without going into too big of spoilers, the guys must literally fight their way through to reach the end of "the golden mile."
Although The World's End, to me, is the lesser of the three in Edgar Wright's "Cornetto Trilogy" (consisting of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and now this), there was still a lot to love about it. The madcap "classic" style of British comedy is still present, and the pace doesn't really let up. If you laugh once it's likely you'll have missed a quick follow-up quip (the dialogue-equivalent of 'blink-and-you-miss-it'), rendering this perfect for a re-watch. The main cast are all great comedically, and this may be Simon Pegg's best role to date. He's given a much deeper role this time around, and gently walks that 'lovable asshole' tightrope to great effect. The main guys are just varied enough to make it easy to identify with at least one of them, and even I, who doesn't drink, somehow felt nostalgic about old English pubs. The ideas of moving on with life and looking back are dealt with lovingly here, even if some of the bigger "sci-fi" stuff isn't as strong. What matters is the characters and story, and until the very last scene it had me.
The problems I had with the sci-fi stuff mostly stemmed from the fact that it felt forced and was way less incongruous than the zombies in Shaun of the Dead. The fight scenes were OK (although I did like that the main guys did 90% of the stunts themselves), which was slightly disappointing seeing as both Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim had absolutely amazing action setpieces. And like Hot Fuzz, The World's End features a famous cameo, but unlike Hot Fuzz, does nothing fun with it. It's just: here he is. Moving on now. It's tough to talk about the stuff I didn't like, because most of it came from the final scene and the sort of "epilogue," but fans of the first two films should enjoy it. There's a joke almost every five seconds, balanced with just the right amount of emotion. By the third go-around you kind of know what to expect. It should be interesting to see what Wright does with Ant-Man in a couple years, his first MAJOR comic book movie, and if he puts the same amount of emotion and character as The World's End into that, it could be one of the best superhero movies coming out (other than Batfleck of course...)
Rating: B
Bonus - Related Internet Video
See Edgar Wright as a youngling, unaware that he would go on to direct movies for Marvel in the future!
No comments:
Post a Comment