The World's End

I so liked the first two of the Cornetto Trilogy that I wanted to be loved up with this one.  There is something about Nick Frost that makes you want to put him in your pocket.  It would have to be a fairly big pocket, mind.

This could have been a great ensemble piece.  It was like the IKEA flatpack of bloody good films, and yet a vital screw was missing.  I'll try not to spoil the plot but it undergoes a "Dusk Till Dawn" transfiguration half way through and goes from being an ex-buddy movie to...something blue and messy.

Simon Pegg is the anti-Nick Angel, playing a bloke suspended in his teens but with the slight air of a forty-year-old Arthur Fonzarelli, still thinking he can click his fingers and chicks will screw him in the loos.  If I'd actually watched the film "Diner" I would think this is a sort of homage - a group of schoolfriends meet up twenty years down the line for a pub crawl.  Most of them are now outwardly respectable, pointing up the difference between them and the retarded Pegg character.

Where The World's End goes horribly wrong, is that it pisses on the audience.  Knowing that there is some brand loyalty, it decides to take the piss a bit.  I'm saying piss too much, aren't I?

I loved "Shaun of the Dead".  For zombie-froth, it actually stands up to several viewings.  I loved "Hot Fuzz".  Simon Pegg was almost (steady on) sexy in that.  The cast was riddled with people off the telly, and it was just smashing.  By the way, I am convinced that V for Vendetta's Guy Fawkes mask is actually based on Timothy Dalton in that film. 

You can suspend your disbelief a bit, but there comes a point where it just seems silly.  It feels a bit like contempt for the viewer.  Just throw us a cornetto and we'll be happy.     

 

The World's End (2013)
Directed by: Edgar Wright
Written by: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, and lots of people I can't remember.