Film Reaction: THE WORLD'S END

Only just realising now that this poster kinda spoils

the climax.  Woops.

Edgar Wright is a very odd filmmaker, but I can't help feel a little kinship with him, even (or perhaps because of) when his films seem to make strange tonal shifts and swerve off in strange directions.  Take Shaun of the Dead, which was promoted as (and likely sold to its distributors as) a spoof of the typical zombie apocalypse movie.  And that's what it is for 70% of its runtime, until towards the end it drops the spoof and simply is a typical zombie apocalypse movie, albeit a very good one.  Ditto for Hot Fuzz and buddy cop actioners.  There's a sense of Wright wanting to have his cake and eat it with these films, and honestly, if I was in his position, I'd wanna do the same thing.  Most 'comedy' directors settle for just being comedy directors, but Wright has aspirations and he's somehow managed to successfully duct-tape them to what outwardly look to be comedies.

That pattern continues with The World's End, which is a comedy about five friends getting really drunk, and also about robots which aren't robots.  Okay, this one is going to take a little longer to explain, so grab a pack of Jaffa Cakes* and settle in.

* - WOOT SPACED REFERENCE

Pictured:  Simon Pegg finds Jesus,

Martin Freeman finds a roll of Soft Mints in his pocket.

The Plot:  Years ago, five daft schoolmates - well, one daft kid and his four enablers, anyway - celebrated their last day of education by going on an epic pub crawl through their hometown of Newton Haven, attempting to complete 'the golden mile', a sketchy path that linked all 12 of the town's premier drinkeries, from The First Post to The World's End.  This did not go according to plan, but twat-in-chief Gary King (Simon Pegg) recalls it as the best night of his life, and some twenty-odd years later he somehow convinces the rest of the crew - Andy (Nick Frost), Peter (Eddie Marsan), Oliver (Hammond's favourite car on Top Gear...also Martin Freeman) and Steven (Paddy Considine) - to join him for a reunion and another shot at conquering the mile.  But it seems like Newton Haven has changed in the intervening years, and not just because nobody seems to remember 'The King'...

Full disclosure - I'm a lifetime teetotaler and this film made me thirsty.

The Good:  The Pegg/Frost connection is as strong as ever, and watching these two bounce off each other is still a joy.  They have a different relationship than the norm in World's End, though, with Frost's Andy being a well-adjusted grown-up and clashing with Pegg's King, who still wants to pretend like he's 17.  It's actually pretty shocking to see Pegg play a character so resolutely unlikable, a kind of modern-day Jack Sparrow without the occasional heroic impulses or acts of bravado, leaving only a bumbling oaf who leads people blindly into danger.  Frost doesn't get to stretch quite so much but he sells completely believable frustration at Gary King's immaturity, and his own descent from mild-mannered bemusement into full-on rage is handled carefully.

The rest of the cast are terrific, too.  Most of them are regulars from the past Wright/Pegg/Frost collaborations and clearly know what's expected of them - Martin Freeman as a nerdish quiet estate agent works out exactly how you'd expect it would, because when does Freeman play a role that isn't nerdishly quiet? - but most do get a few moments to shine, and not just because of the action scenes (we'll come back to that).  Eddie Marsan has a kind of permanently doe-eyed look to him that's immediately sympathetic and complimented by his soft voice, Paddy Considine has a well-paced romantic arc and does good work with his temper flare-ups when he feels that Gary is competing with him, and there's fun bit-parts from reliable hands like Mark Heap and David Bradley, not to mention Pierce Brosnan rocking an enviable goatee.  Rosamund Pike takes the only female role of significance, Oliver's sister Sam, and provides a non-drunk anchor to most of the dramatic beats involving both Gary and Steven.  On a sidenote, I've always liked Pike's work but she's had a terrible habit of appearing in some truly awful movies (I think her first feature work was Die Another Day...need I go on?) but between this and the surprisingly good Tom Cruise detective flick Jack Reacher she's on a minor roll now.

Oh no!  The review is under attack by JJ Abrams!

It shouldn't really surprise anyone at this point that an Edgar Wright film is legitimately funny, and in a way that's both all-inclusively obvious and yet devoid of the crassness present in basically every effort from the Judd Apatow & Friends wheelhouse.  It's quite hard to quote examples here - the beauty of The World's End's jokes are that they slot into the characters' mouths mid-chatter and feel utterly natural even while you bust a gut over them.  But hey, at least this way I'm not spoiling them for you, right?

What might surprise you is how well The World's End works as an action movie.  Okay, so Hot Fuzz kinda was one too, but it spent so much time lampooning the aesthetic and clichés of the genre that it was hard to appreciate the craftwork involved.  Here though, almost all of the 12 pubs visited on the Golden Mile turn into a battleground, and our 'heroes' are forced to fend off hordes of (not) robot people, whose limbs and heads are remarkably fragile, and whose veins are filled with high-pressure blue ink to keep the rating boards happy while still being gory as hell.  The choreography on display is excellent, taking the concept of 'joke fighting' from Jackie Chan films and applying it to a bunch of people who plainly aren't built for this sort of thing but kinda do well anyway, and Wright is a smart enough director to keep things kinetic without obscuring the action needlessly through handheld wobbling or rapid-fire edits.  There is one particular element brought into the fray that I feel could've been used more/better (spoiler!) but between the fights and the chases, the amount of adrenaline kick offered by The World's End is bizarrely impressive.

Beyond that, what will really make the film stand out in years to come (I expect) is its themes and how they're expressed.  The World's End plays heavily on nostalgia before tearing away the rose-tinted specs and giving a sobering reminder that the past is just the past, and you can't go through life just reliving the fond memories of youth.  It actually gets genuinely depressing at points, especially for me, since I am exactly the sort of person who chooses to wallow in childhood fantasies rather than do all that complicated 'grow up and be a productive member of society' bollocks.  Gary's journey carries him through enthusiasm to desperation and eventual self-destruction, and while part of me still couldn't shake the oddness of seeing Simon Pegg of all people doing this kind of acting, he really nails the breakdown.

"HEY GUYS I THINK I FOUND THE CRYSTAL SKULL"

The Bad:  Y'know I was saying about how funny the movie was?  While I stand by that, there was a stretch at the start where I thought that Wright might have lost the magic.  The film takes a while to find its groove, as the introductions to Gary's mates, one after the other, sort of drag themselves out to irritating length and serve only to point out how 'normal' (boring) these blokes are now.  It's probably only ten minutes off the running time in total, and I might be overestimating the impact purely since I had convinced a friend to come with me, and he had precious little exposure to previous Wright/Pegg/Frost material, and I didn't want him to quickly sour on the group, but it is an issue.

Funnily enough, one problem is the film's start, and the other is its end.  I can't go into detail without spoilers but suffice to say that the movie veers off in a surprising direction for the last five-ten minutes and it feels...very unnecessary.  Perhaps a 'happier' ending wouldn't gel with the overall themes, but the fact that Gary essentially defaults back to the idiot he was at the start of the movie even after his convincing breakdown feels like a serious misstep.

Bonus bad: That carpet.  I swear my grandmother had the same one

in her hallway and living room and it was bloody horrendous.

Verdict:  It's probably just as well I took a few days to get this review together, as it's let my bitterness over the movie's finale subside and I can better appreciate The World's End for what it is, that being another great Edgar Wright comedy hybrid, albeit a more complex one than we've come to expect.  This movie spoke to a part of me I don't like to see criticized, which is a touch uncomfortable, but it did so so honestly that I've got no choice but to admit that the problem here is with me, not the movie.  It's poignant, but also funny and almost alarmingly exciting, and features career-best performances from its central duo and great work from basically everyone else.  It also involves more dismemberment than you'd otherwise reasonably expect, so it's getting a good 9 out of 10 despite that ending.

Now can you please concentrate on Ant-Man now, Mr. Wright?  [/fanboy]

Presented without comment.

Because really, how do you improve this picture?