Edgar Wright’s ‘The World’s End’ was released over the weekend, and boy was it a drunken, wild ride. The final film in Wright’s and Simon Pegg’s Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy is the perfect ending to a decade of British badassery.
The World’s End theatrical poster
Wright and Pegg wrote the film with Wright also directing. And of course, the lovable Nick Frost was brought in again, but this time his role is not that of the lovable loaf. That honor is given to Simon Pegg this time around.
‘The World’s End’ is the sequel to 2004’s ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and 2007’s ‘Hot Fuzz.’ The same slew of actors appear across the films, most notably Martin Freeman of Bilbo Baggins and ‘The Hobbit’ fame. In previous films, Freeman played small cameo appearances where as in this final installment, he is a central character in the plot.
As you may have seen or realized from the trailers from the movie, ‘The World’s End’ is about five old friends from high school who decide to take on the legendary Golden Mile in their hometown of Newton-Haven. The Golden Mile is a pub crawl involving a slew of different bars with outlandish names with the goal being to drink a bar in all 12 pubs.
Without getting into any spoilers, the gang notices some odd things about their old hometown and their favorite pubs, most importantly. Eventually, they come to realize that nearly the entire town has been turned into robots with blue blood… “It’s more like ink.”
The movie has the same structure as previous ones with a prologue to introduce the characters, events that set it up and then hilarity and insanity ensue.
One of the more iconic gags is the fence joke. In ‘Shaun,’ Pegg climbs a child’s slide to scout the zombie horde. In ‘Hot Fuzz,’ Pegg leaps over backyard fences which leads to Frost’s character to just run into it like a lump. In the final move, Pegg once again tries his hand at a fence only to hit it and collapse on top of it.
Fight scenes in this movie are superb, with Frost’s character (he’s a corporate attorney) taking charge during robot horde charges.
One memorable scene from the movie occurs near the end in what could be the epilogue. A wrapper from what looks to be a mint flavored Cornetto ice cream blows in the wind, getting caught dead center on screen. This scene at least caused our movie theater to applaud.
The movie uses British wit and humor to deliver one hell of a punch at the theater. The trio of Wright, Pegg and Frost have outdone themselves for this final movie, but leaving a very satisfying end to a long loved film franchise.
5 out of 5 stars
