If you’re on your way to the multiplex in search of that great new end-of-the world comedy you’ve heard about, be careful you don’t confuse the hilarious This Is The End with the new Edgar Wright film, The World’s End. You’ll still garner more than a few laughs with the final installment to the trilogy that includes Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but you wouldn’t want to miss the real deal.
It’s not that The World’s End is mediocre, though. To the contrary, it’s one of the summer’s more refreshing comedies. Genre-bending rarely gets this good. What starts out as a middle-aged buddies flick morphs into a robot-horror send-up as abruptly as you can say, “There’s blue ooze coming out of their heads instead of blood.” Credit the comic skills of British TV comic star Simon Pegg with keeping the film soundly tongue-in-cheek as he portrays a 40-ish lout with loads of charisma to match the unchanging fact that this guy is an unequivocal load. He manages to look up four old friends who’ve all gone on to a respectable uniformity of establishment success and to somehow convince them to reenact a pub crawl they attempted a couple of decades back. He lies, cajoles, and makes them feel guilty until they comply to revisit their hometown, Newton Haven.
When they get there something is amiss, apart from the fact the first two pubs look identical, or”Starbucked,” as one of them says. Old friends and acquaintances don’t seem to recognize them.
Pretty soon, they’ve got a bunch of young, eerie lads staring at them.
Enter, round two, when the movie goes 180 degrees onto robotland and an endless array of fight scenes. The comedy still comes, but it begins to slow down. The talented interplay between Pegg and Nick Frost, as a stuffy financial type who goes off the wagon mid-film, can only partially save the proceedings. Rife with repetitiveness, this could have been a better film with a little tweak here and a few less fight scenes there. (It’s funny the first time when our heros at the drop of a dime develop superb brawling skills; after the dozenth, not so much.)
Despite its flaws, there’s a lot go like here, not least of which is the superb soundtrack featuring 80s British faves Sisters of Mercy, The Beautiful South and many very good Manchester bands. Paddy Considine and Eddie Matson lend their not inconsiderable acting talents to the mix, although the usually superb Considine is largely wasted here. And the eye candy couldn’t be better: Rosalind Pike transcends the patronizing role of designated female, easily outdoing Emma Watson in her brief scenes in This Is The End.
By my personal laugh count, you should see this film. After you see This Is the End.