"The World's End" - directed by Edgar Wright
Trilogies are all the rage these days.
Everything from The Matrix to Spider-Man and from Toy Story to two sets of Star Wars films have been presented in threes.
When done well they provide a nice three act set up and you get The Lord of the Rings and The Dark Knight.
Beginning, middle, end with nice story and character arcs that tell compelling and complete stories.
They exist in three films because that is how many are required to tell their stories.
Poor execution provides bloated shambles that do a dis-service to the original film - refer to The Matrix and The Pirates of the Caribbean films (yes, there ended up being four of those and a fifth is on the way God help us)
These films fail because they exist only because the first films were massive hits.
Writer-director Edgar Wright has a different take on the movie trilogy.
His so called Cornetto Trilogy started with "Shaun Of the Dead", progressed with "Hot Fuzz" and now concludes with "The World's End".
And the twist is that they do not form a trilogy in the sense that they provide a complete story.
But they do share a common sensibility and feel like they belong together even if there is no dramatic glue as such.
The actors, writer and of course director are the same and this provides a very definite connective tissue.
The Cornetto part refers to an in-joke in which someone pointed out to director Wright that characters always buy and eat Cornetto ice-creams in his films.
He joked that it was his three flavours trilogy much like Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours trilogy - "Blue", "White" and "Red".
It is a jokey but apt comparison - Kieslowski's three films were not related in any way other than being inspired by the three political ideals of the French Republic- Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
Of course there is one thing that all three of Wright's 'trilogy' films share and that is genre.
First and foremost these are comedies
"Shaun of the Dead"may have been a gory zombie flick but only in so much as a laugh could be garnered from it.
"Hot Fuzz" was a Buddy Cop picture and it allowed for all kinds of piss to be taken out of pretty much the entirety of producer Joel Silver's films (Lethal Weapon, Commando, Die Hard etc).
With "The World's End" Wright has made a movie less inspired by others than the previous two.
There is a dash of the "Stepford Wives" about it but it feels much more like an 'original' work.
It's the simple tale of a man hoping to gather his high school friends together to complete the pub crawl that they fell short of completing twenty years prior.
Gary (Simon Pegg) has not moved on from those days.
The others have moved away, developed careers and got married.
With a mixture of tenacity, bribery and lying Gary convinces them to return to the small town that they grew up in to drink a pint of beer at each of the twelve pubs from the famous pub crawl twenty years ago.
So they begin at 'The First Post' with the aim of finishing at "The World's End' by way of 'The Old Familiar', 'The Famous Cock', 'The Cross Hands', 'The Good Companions', 'The Trusty Servant', 'The Two Headed Dog', 'The Mermaid', 'The Beehive', 'The King's Head' and 'The Hole in the Wall'.
With each downed pint memories of past events and bitterness from old tensions are revealed.
A rivalry over one of the groups sister is re-ignited with the arrival of Sam (Rosamund Pike).
Each character will reveal an old unresolved issue from the old days.
For Peter it is the bullying at school, for Steven the girl that got away and for Andrew an unspecified accident that has ended his friendship with Gary.
But none of the group is as troubled as Gary himself.
It is this character that sets the tone and provides the theme for the film.
He hasn't found his place in the world.
Twenty years ago he did but everyone has moved on without him.
Not that anyone else is particularly happy anyway but they are doing what they are supposed to do - getting married and getting jobs that they hate to buy things that they don't need.
By the time the alien robot invasion is revealed it is a relief to have a diversion from the sad reality of the characters lives.
It all sounds a bit too heavy for a comedy and whilst there are tonal shifts into some dark areas the laughs are ever present.
The slick dialogue one-two punches that served "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" are here of course but I also found much to smile about with the sly musical cues that Wright employs.
Nineties Brit pop provides lyrics such as 'Call the Cops!' after an encounter with a police officer.
The Peter Fonda "The Wild Angels" sample from the beginning of Primal Scream's "Loaded" becomes almost a battle cry throughout the film.
('Just what is it that you want to do? We wanna be free. We wanna be free to do whatever we wanna do. And we wanna get loaded')
The soundtrack is a spectacular overview of British music in the nineties with contributions from Blur, James, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, Soup Dragons and many more.
During a fight scene one character advises another to 'twist his melon' in reference to Happy Mondays track 'Step On'.
And on the subject of the fight scenes - they are incredibly well done.
Wright showed his skill in shooting action in "Hot Fuzz" and "Scott Pilgrim vs the World" but he outdoes himself here.
He gets away with some extreme violence by virtue of the fact that the people being decapitated and dismembered are in fact blue-blooded robots.
Action aside a lot of the fun is watching the stellar cast bounce off each other.
Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are always good but for me the work that the great Eddie Marsan does is the real treat.
The biggest laugh that I got was courtesy of his skilled comic timing and perfect execution.
I could watch Rosamund Pike exclaim 'Oh, crumbs' forever and as always she is a captivating prescence.
The budget for this film was not even double that of "Hot Fuzz" but still packs in a host of impressive CG effects work and looks considerably more expensive than it was.
A lot of thanks is due to Director of Photography Bill Pope who does typically fine work.
Pope frequently shoots Sam Raimi's films and is perhaps most well known for his brilliant work in the Matrix films.
It can't have been an easy shoot with so much action and so much night shooting but Wright and his crew pulled it off in twelve weeks.
The alien effects are effective with a creepy use of eye lights and a clear nod to "The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" in their stand and point poses.
The result is "The Stepford Wives", "Fight Club" and "Attack the Block" in a blender with a healthy dose of the humour of Wrights earlier films.
This really does feel like the culmination of the Wright-Pegg collaboration.
The execution is slicker and the action far more impressive.
There is a maturity to the humour and they have really perfected the rapid fire dialogue that made the previous films so unique.
Not that it is without issues however.
The entire alien invasion plot sounds more clever on paper than in reality.
Without wanting to enter spoiler territory the alien plan and their ultimate goal seems ridiculous.
Their ultimate move is completely absurd and the result feels like it belongs in a different movie.
Swipes are taken at social media and our reliance on digital devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Given that a fair chunk of the marketing for this movie was done via Facebook, You Tube and other social networks it seems a lot like having your cake and eating it too.
Personally I still rate "Shaun of the Dead" the finest of the three movies and certainly the funniest.
I would put "Hot Fuzz" above "The World's End" too but that says more about the quality of that film than any issues that I have with the latest one.
I enjoyed it a lot for the performances, the humour and the originality.
And it also really, really made me want to drink beer.
Everything from The Matrix to Spider-Man and from Toy Story to two sets of Star Wars films have been presented in threes.
When done well they provide a nice three act set up and you get The Lord of the Rings and The Dark Knight.
Beginning, middle, end with nice story and character arcs that tell compelling and complete stories.
They exist in three films because that is how many are required to tell their stories.
Poor execution provides bloated shambles that do a dis-service to the original film - refer to The Matrix and The Pirates of the Caribbean films (yes, there ended up being four of those and a fifth is on the way God help us)
These films fail because they exist only because the first films were massive hits.
Writer-director Edgar Wright has a different take on the movie trilogy.
His so called Cornetto Trilogy started with "Shaun Of the Dead", progressed with "Hot Fuzz" and now concludes with "The World's End".
And the twist is that they do not form a trilogy in the sense that they provide a complete story.
But they do share a common sensibility and feel like they belong together even if there is no dramatic glue as such.
The actors, writer and of course director are the same and this provides a very definite connective tissue.
The Cornetto part refers to an in-joke in which someone pointed out to director Wright that characters always buy and eat Cornetto ice-creams in his films.
He joked that it was his three flavours trilogy much like Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours trilogy - "Blue", "White" and "Red".
It is a jokey but apt comparison - Kieslowski's three films were not related in any way other than being inspired by the three political ideals of the French Republic- Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
First and foremost these are comedies
"Shaun of the Dead"may have been a gory zombie flick but only in so much as a laugh could be garnered from it.
"Hot Fuzz" was a Buddy Cop picture and it allowed for all kinds of piss to be taken out of pretty much the entirety of producer Joel Silver's films (Lethal Weapon, Commando, Die Hard etc).
With "The World's End" Wright has made a movie less inspired by others than the previous two.
There is a dash of the "Stepford Wives" about it but it feels much more like an 'original' work.
It's the simple tale of a man hoping to gather his high school friends together to complete the pub crawl that they fell short of completing twenty years prior.
Gary (Simon Pegg) has not moved on from those days.
The others have moved away, developed careers and got married.
With a mixture of tenacity, bribery and lying Gary convinces them to return to the small town that they grew up in to drink a pint of beer at each of the twelve pubs from the famous pub crawl twenty years ago.
So they begin at 'The First Post' with the aim of finishing at "The World's End' by way of 'The Old Familiar', 'The Famous Cock', 'The Cross Hands', 'The Good Companions', 'The Trusty Servant', 'The Two Headed Dog', 'The Mermaid', 'The Beehive', 'The King's Head' and 'The Hole in the Wall'.
With each downed pint memories of past events and bitterness from old tensions are revealed.
A rivalry over one of the groups sister is re-ignited with the arrival of Sam (Rosamund Pike).
Each character will reveal an old unresolved issue from the old days.
For Peter it is the bullying at school, for Steven the girl that got away and for Andrew an unspecified accident that has ended his friendship with Gary.But none of the group is as troubled as Gary himself.
It is this character that sets the tone and provides the theme for the film.
He hasn't found his place in the world.
Twenty years ago he did but everyone has moved on without him.
Not that anyone else is particularly happy anyway but they are doing what they are supposed to do - getting married and getting jobs that they hate to buy things that they don't need.
By the time the alien robot invasion is revealed it is a relief to have a diversion from the sad reality of the characters lives.
It all sounds a bit too heavy for a comedy and whilst there are tonal shifts into some dark areas the laughs are ever present.
The slick dialogue one-two punches that served "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" are here of course but I also found much to smile about with the sly musical cues that Wright employs.
Nineties Brit pop provides lyrics such as 'Call the Cops!' after an encounter with a police officer.
The Peter Fonda "The Wild Angels" sample from the beginning of Primal Scream's "Loaded" becomes almost a battle cry throughout the film.
('Just what is it that you want to do? We wanna be free. We wanna be free to do whatever we wanna do. And we wanna get loaded')
The soundtrack is a spectacular overview of British music in the nineties with contributions from Blur, James, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, Soup Dragons and many more.
During a fight scene one character advises another to 'twist his melon' in reference to Happy Mondays track 'Step On'.
And on the subject of the fight scenes - they are incredibly well done.
Wright showed his skill in shooting action in "Hot Fuzz" and "Scott Pilgrim vs the World" but he outdoes himself here.
He gets away with some extreme violence by virtue of the fact that the people being decapitated and dismembered are in fact blue-blooded robots.
Action aside a lot of the fun is watching the stellar cast bounce off each other.
Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are always good but for me the work that the great Eddie Marsan does is the real treat.
The biggest laugh that I got was courtesy of his skilled comic timing and perfect execution.
I could watch Rosamund Pike exclaim 'Oh, crumbs' forever and as always she is a captivating prescence.
 |
| L-R.. Nick Frost, Rosamund Pike, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman and Simon Pegg |
A lot of thanks is due to Director of Photography Bill Pope who does typically fine work.
Pope frequently shoots Sam Raimi's films and is perhaps most well known for his brilliant work in the Matrix films.
It can't have been an easy shoot with so much action and so much night shooting but Wright and his crew pulled it off in twelve weeks.
The alien effects are effective with a creepy use of eye lights and a clear nod to "The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" in their stand and point poses.
The result is "The Stepford Wives", "Fight Club" and "Attack the Block" in a blender with a healthy dose of the humour of Wrights earlier films.
This really does feel like the culmination of the Wright-Pegg collaboration.
The execution is slicker and the action far more impressive.
There is a maturity to the humour and they have really perfected the rapid fire dialogue that made the previous films so unique.
Not that it is without issues however.
The entire alien invasion plot sounds more clever on paper than in reality.
Without wanting to enter spoiler territory the alien plan and their ultimate goal seems ridiculous.
Their ultimate move is completely absurd and the result feels like it belongs in a different movie.
Swipes are taken at social media and our reliance on digital devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Given that a fair chunk of the marketing for this movie was done via Facebook, You Tube and other social networks it seems a lot like having your cake and eating it too.
Personally I still rate "Shaun of the Dead" the finest of the three movies and certainly the funniest.
I would put "Hot Fuzz" above "The World's End" too but that says more about the quality of that film than any issues that I have with the latest one.
I enjoyed it a lot for the performances, the humour and the originality.
And it also really, really made me want to drink beer.
| Rated | R13 for violence and profanity |
| Running Time: | 108 minutes (1hr, 43 mins without end credits) |
| Starring: |
| Simon Pegg | --- Gary King |
| Nick Frost | --- Andrew Knightley |
| Rosamund Pike | --- Sam |
| Martin Freeman | --- Oliver |
| Eddie Marsan | --- Peter |
| Paddy Considine | --- Steven |
| David Bradley | --- Basil |
| Mark Heap | --- Publican |
| Pierce Brosnan | --- Mr Shepherd |
| Bill Nighy | --- Voice |
| John Duggan | --- Customer |
| Rafe Spall | --- Real Estate Prospect |
| Adam Prickett | --- Cross Hands Customer |
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