Movie Review: The World’s End
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
I am a huge fan of Edgar Wright, the English director who helmed Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). Wright is responsible for some of my favorite comedies, and he is a director whose work I will always support. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are the first two parts of a thematic trilogy; one not connected by characters or narrative, but instead by shared traits and motifs, and all of them directed by Wright, written by Wright and Simon Pegg, and starring Pegg and Nick Frost. This trilogy is alternately known as either the “Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy” or the “Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy” – because of the shared elements of gory violence and a running joke about the British ice cream product Cornetto. And at long last, The World’s End, the third film of the Trilogy has finally arrived, and it’s awesome.
Twenty years after attempting an epic pub crawl, five childhood friends – Gary King (Simon Pegg), Andy Knightley (Nick Frost), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), Oliver Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), and Peter Page (Eddie Marsan) – reunite to try the drinking marathon again. They are convinced to stage the encore by Gary, a 40-year-old man trapped at the cigarette end of his teens, who drags his reluctant pals to their hometown of Newton Haven and once again attempts to reach the fabled pub, The World’s End. As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realize the real struggle is for the future, not just theirs but humankind’s, and reaching The World’s End is the least of their worries.
A big factor in why the first two films of the Cornetto Trilogy worked so well is the excellent casts they both had, and that is definitely the case in The World’s End as well. As always, the lead roles are filled by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who here play respectively Gary King and Andy Knightley. I really appreciate the fact that the dynamic between Pegg and Frost’s characters has been flipped this time around. In both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Pegg played the more level-headed of the two, while Frost was the bumbling but well-meaning one. In The World’s End, Pegg’s Gary is not just irresponsible, but he really works as a deconstruction of the man-child protagonists we’ve see so often in recent comedies, and shows how pathetic someone like that would really be, but because of Pegg’s inherent likeability, we’re still willing to follow Gary and hope that he learns to better himself. By contrast, Frost’s Andy is serious and buttoned-up, to the point of being a total killjoy at times, but we can tell that he’s not just being a jerk and he does want Gary to clean up his act. The gang of five friends is rounded out by Paddy Considine as Steven Prince, Martin Freeman as Oliver Chamberlain, and Eddie Marsan as Peter Page, who all do solid supporting work. Rosamund Pike plays Sam Chamberlain, Oliver’s sister, and she is definitely the best female character of any film in the Cornetto Trilogy, completely putting to rest my initial worries that she would end up just being a love interest. Piece Brosnan – whose presence in the film has surprisingly not been played up in any of the trailers – is great as Guy Shepherd, the guys’ former teacher who tries to convince them to willingly submit to the aliens. David Bradley, who played Argus Filch in the Harry Potter series and the incomprehensibly-accented farmer in Hot Fuzz, has a brief but hilarious role as an elderly conspiracy theorist named Basil. Michael Smiley, who played the character of Tyres on Simon Pegg’s TV series Spaced, has the surprisingly poignant role of Reverend Green, a former drug dealer. And although I wouldn’t dream of spoiling when and how he shows up, character actor extraordinaire Bill Nighy, who played Shaun’s stepdad Phillip in Shaun of the Dead and the chief inspector in Hot Fuzz, shows up here in a most unexpected way. Fans of the previous two films in the Trilogy will also get a kick out of seeing a number of people who appeared in one or both of the previous films, such as Reece Shearsmith, Rafe Spall, and Alice Lowe, showing up in small parts or cameos here.
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The humor in the movie is absolutely spot-on. I can’t recall the last time I laughed this much while in a theater. So many of the laughs in the Cornetto Trilogy come from the juxtaposition of having these momentous events happening in mundane settings, and the concept of an apocalyptic alien invasion acting as the backdrop of five guys trying to complete a pub crawl is just ripe with comic potential. Even as they start to realize that the world might be falling apart around them, the characters are still consumed with their own personal issues, which leads to some hilariously skewed priorities – just one example of this is when Andy is so mad that Gary lied to him that it takes Andy a while to notice the smashed robot on the floor in front of him. Wright and Pegg’s love of symbolism and foreshadowing, which was put to great use in both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is also very much on display here, with lines and moments that happen early on being called back to later under very different circumstances. And there’s a smattering of excellent physical comedy, including the running gag used in each film of the Trilogy where a character tries and fails to jump over a fence.
I also have to say that the film has more action than I was expecting. The alien robots – or “Blanks,” as the characters eventually decide to call them – are superhumanly strong but not all that durable, which results in some awesome fights which involve the robots being smashed apart in ways that would be horrifying if they were happening to humans. But because the robots are full of blue fluid instead of anything resembling human blood, the film is much less gory than either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. The action centerpiece here is a spectacular brawl in one of the pubs which involves, among many other things, the awesome image of Nick Frost dual-wielding bar stools and using them to bludgeon Blanks. The proficiency that Wright displays with the action here just makes me even more excited to see what he’ll do with Ant-Man for Marvel Studios.
Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, and Simon Pegg in “The World’s End.” Photo by Laurie Sparham – © 2013 – Focus Features.
As much as I loved the film, there are a few things I had issues with. Without going into spoilers, the ending of the film took what seemed to me like a sudden turn into much larger-scale territory than I was expecting, and I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. While the ending certainly isn’t bad, it really doesn’t fit with the vibe of most of this film or the two previous movies in the Cornetto Trilogy, both of which kept things on a smaller, more personal scale throughout their stories. And I have to say, when the film’s Cornetto joke finally happened, I was actually a little disappointed by how tacked-on it seemed.
But even with the qualms I did have, I still loved The World’s End. Right now, I think I would put it as the third-best film of the Cornetto Trilogy, because well it is good, I don’t think it’s as good as Shuan of the Dead or Hot Fuzz – although my opinion of The World’s End might change for the better after I get the chance to see it again. With a great cast, side-splittingly funny humor, and some cool action, this is exactly what I want when I see a comedy. Personally, I would put this as my third-favorite film of the year to date, after Much Ado About Nothing and Pacific Rim. If you want to see a great comedy at the theater right now, look no further than The World’s End.
Timothy Monforton
