Moroni's Review of "The World's End"

The World's End

Sometimes reunions don't go over well, and it's best to leave the past in the past.  At least that's what Simon Pegg's character Gary King discovers in the third installment of the "Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy" that includes "Shaun of the Dead", "Hot Fuzz", and now this one, "The World's End".  The trilogy gets its name from featuring a new ice cream flavor in each film.  The other common elements are that all of the films are directed by Edgar Wright, written by both Wright and Pegg, and feature many of the same actors, like Simon Pegg, the brilliant Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy (who provides a brilliant voice-over), and others.

The film starts out with a group of five boys on the night of graduation. They decide to try the "Golden Mile", a pub crawl that includes twelve pubs, and ends at a pub called The World's End.  Their attempt fails, and the groups soon disbands.  Twenty years later, Gary King, who was the de facto leader of the gang, tries to round up the crew for a repeat of the Golden Mile.  This time the aim is to complete the crawl.  The problem - everyone has moved on with their lives and has become entrenched in adult life.  Everyone except Gary, who is stuck in the '90s.  With his Doc Martens, black trenchcoat and Sisters of Mercy t-shirt, he is still the same free spirit he was in high school, except that he has not evolved.  The crew reluctantly decides to reunite, along with the sister of Martin Freeman's character, played by the beautiful Rosamund Pike.  Right from the start, the night is a disaster that culminates in a discovery that the world is being taken over by alien robots.  But this fact does not prevent Gary from trying to complete the Golden Mile.

This movie is frightfully funny with the same dry wit and macabre sense of humor that was prevalent in "Shaun of the Dead".  My wife thought it was weird.  But I spent the whole movie chuckling.

The soundtrack was great, filled with gems from the late '80s and early '90s like Happy Mondays, the Sundays, Blur, and the Stone Roses.  Gary's obsession with Sisters of Mercy figures prominently in the plot, and the film ends with a rousing rendition of "This Corrosion".

All in all, this was an enjoyable movie.  As usual, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play very well off of each other.  Edgar Wright's directing style - filled with rapid zoom-ins - is becoming familiar and compliments the rapid-pace action of the movie.  I am definitely hoping that there will be another flavor in the trilogy.