The World’s End
starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike and Pierce Brosnan, with the voice of Bill Nighy
written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
directed by Edgar Wright
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦
This movie is completely stupid, but it’s also funny and clever. I laughed out loud at the cleverness and the quick humor, jokes and puns and funny stuff delivered with machine gun speed. It is the fourth Simon Pegg/Nick Frost movie I’ve watched. The others were Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and Paul (2011).
At first I thought it was a comedy horror, a parody of Dusk to Dawn (which itself is a parody horror). But it turned out to be a parody science fiction horror, a play on The Body Snatchers.
In therapy for depression and attempted suicide Gary (Simon Pegg), a very mercurial figure, persuades his old high school mates to get back together to relive their aborted epic pub crawl from their school graduation on June 22, 1990. Now the middle aged men are reluctant but they agree and meet in their old hometown, rural garden city Newton Haven, which they all swore never to revisit. During their drunken adventures they discover an alien invasion under way, so it’s a pub crawl with robotic aliens. Suddenly the story turns into The Body Snatchers. “It’s not an invasion, it’s a merger.” Instead of fleeing Gary, as the leader of the group, is bent on finishing and conquering his list of twelve pubs and consuming near lethal amounts of alcohol. I thought it speaks informatively about the culture of drink in Britain and the problems they have there with alcoholism and youthful binge drinking.
“Twelve pubs along a legendary path of alcoholic indulgence: The First Post, The Old Familiar, The Famous Cock, The Cross Hands, The Good Companions, The Trusty Servant, The Two Headed Dog, The Mermaid, The Beehive, The King’s Head, The Hole in the Wall, and The World’s End.”
At first I mistook Simon Pegg for Robert Carlyle, an actor I don’t like very much because he always seems like a weasley-faced whinger. Although they are both Scottish, they don’t really look anything alike.