Film Review: The World's End

After the boisterous success of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” the creative ménage à trois of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost culminates their unofficial ‘three flavor Cornetto trilogy’ with the sci-fi comedy fusion “The World’s End.”

In spite of the spate of apocalyptic-themed movies that came out this summer, "The World’s End” does not lose any steam in its attempt to cast the genre in a new light. The film starts off with an exuberant nostalgic swagger, taking us back to Gary King’s (Simon Pegg) younger days with a Super 8 retro-montage of his and his buddies’ first attempt at 'the golden mile,' a pub crawl set in the provincial British town of Newton Haven that requires them to visit 12 pubs and imbibe a pint in each. The end goal of this boozy odyssey is to reach the fated drinking hole, ‘The World’s End.' King’s merry band (including most prominently Nick Frost and Martin Freeman) never finishes the fated pub crawl and we are flung back to the bittersweet present where King is in an Addicts’ Anonymous meeting, relating the best moment of his life. In this sobering moment, our protagonist then realizes that he must complete the challenge that his schoolboy self couldn’t in order to reclaim any sense of value from his wasted life. He then sets out to regroup his high school friends to finish off ‘the golden mile’ once and for all.

The screenplay then spirals into the prototypical getting-the-old-band-back-together sequence of scenes, but it does so in a frenetic and youthful fashion, reveling in King's brilliant immaturity and countered by the fraught seriousness of his ‘grown up’ friends' lives. The Edgar Wright-helmed work eventually evolves into its sci-fi comedy mash-up form. Thankfully, Wright doesn’t get bogged down in either genre and casts each in a refreshing and engaging light. There’s lively wordplay in each scene and the actors never miss a beat, demonstrating their acting and comedic chops with a firm British grace.

Additionally, "The World’s End" benefits from its well-deserved big budget. Using CGI and elaborate cinematic tricks to bring the vibrant set-pieces to life, Edgar Wright and his crew create some of the most exciting action sequences seen in the past year. The work also doesn’t cast aside film’s visual intrigue for the sake of entertainment. It excels cinematographically where other blockbusters don’t, using interesting and creative shots to reveal character and engross the viewer from an aesthetic perspective.

The film, in its beer-soaked essence, is a rant that never loses its comedic edge and stylistic spirit. It contains just the right inflection of vulgarity, fusing witty banter with pop-culture references and physical comedy to create an artistic piece that never flounders or treats its subject matter with aloof irony. "The World’s End" does not deliver the huge laughs that (American) audiences have come to expect (and usually don’t receive) from other Hollywood fare. But, the film succeeds in its consistent entertainment value. It surprises with its probing emotional depth, a feature severely lacking in comedies—and most all works—in the cinematic landscape.