Wright, Frost and Pegg at "World's End"

I was a little confused by the early trailers for "The World's End." Wan't this supposed to be Edgar Wright and company's spoof of an apocalypse film? Or were we looking at something closer to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," which though technically under the aegis of the sci-fi genre, is much closer to horror, and they'd already covered very similar thematic ground in "Sean of the Dead," right? Anyway, the prior collaborations of Wright with actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost was strong enough that I was willing to give them some benefit of the doubt.

"World's End" caps off what is now popularly known as the "Cornetto Trilogy," begun with zombie parody "Sean of the Dead," and continued with action movie lampoon, "Hot Fuzz." If you didn't know anything about "World's End," you might initially mistake it for a pleasant little comedy about a group of old college friends who reunite after a few decades to go bar-hopping together. Simon Pegg plays Gary King, once the coolest guy in town, but now a washed-up, middle-aged nobody who never really did anything with his life. Trying to recapture some of his former glory, he manipulates his old friends Andy (Nick Frost), Steven (Paddy Considine), Oliver (Martin Freeman), and Peter (Eddie Marsan) to come help him finish the Golden Mile, which requires twelve pints downed from twelve different pubs around their hometown of Newton Haven. Twenty years ago, they didn't manage to finish, but this time Gary is determined to succeed.

There's absolutely nothing genre-related going on in the first thirty to forty minutes of the film, but it's still a pretty entertaining look at a group of old friends taking stock of where they've ended up after twenty years. Gary is extremely likeable, in spite of being a mess of a human being and willing to resort to all kinds of lies and tricks in order to get his way. Pegg gives him a lot of rough-edged charm and vulnerability. Frost, meanwhile, is playing against type as the most world-weary and most successful of the bunch, who has the least amount of patience for Gary's antics. Their relationship, as is tradition, is the heart of the film. The other three members of their group are less well defined, but get their own little subplots and moments to shine. I'd have been perfectly happy to see a straight comedy with these guys, just dealing with typical middle-aged problems.

So when the supernatural action business does get underway, initially I was a little put off. Were we really going to have to drop all this good character-building for an hour of fights and chases and CGI explosions? But this wasn't "Transformers," but an Edgar Wright film, and he's always very adept at weaving all the themes and the story threads into the action. The guys do quite a bit of soul-searching and personal demon slaying as they try to survive the night. I won't give away the nature of the threat, in case you haven't been spoiled by the trailers and the commercials yet, but rest assured that Wright and the rest also do right by the science-fiction genre, the way they did with the zombies and the action heroes.

Edgar Wright's movie universes are always a lot of fun because they're so well constructed. "The World's End" has loads of little details you won't pick up until a rewatch, all of them subtly and not-so-subtly reinforcing the story's themes and ideas. The science-fiction story parallels the guys' own gradual slide into complacency and suburban stagnation over the years. Each new bar brings new surprises, the situation escalating to a wonderfully weird finale. I liked that there were real consequences to people's actions, and the story goes to some surprisingly deep, dark, and serious places. On the other hand, the action is a blast to watch, the humor delivers, and the movie is an awful lot of fun.

As with the previous Cornetto films, keep an eye out for cameos, in-jokes, references, and visual puns. I expect that opinions are going to be very mixed as to how this compares to the previous installments in the trilogy. It's probably the least action-oriented, and the least concerned with dissecting genre tropes, but it also has some of the most well-rounded characters with the most touching stories. The epilogue has been downright controversial in the discussions I've seen around the internet. Personally, I like "The World's End" a little less than "Shaun of the Dead" and a little more than "Hot Fuzz." And it is by far the best of it's own particular little sub-genre of similar films that we've seen this year.

And does this have to be the last Cornetto film? There are so many more movie genres that could use this trio's attention.
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