There seems to be a rash of above average comedies and action flicks this summer involving world ending scenarios. Whether the cause is zombies, the Christian rapture, or giant monsters from another dimension, 2013 has been the year to take the piss out of the apocalypse and make it fun (and funny) again. The third installment in what some fans have dubbed the “Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy” (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and now The World’s End), sticks to the trend of the world ending, this time, by blue-goo-filled robots.
The title The World’s End doubles in meaning as both the apocalypse and the name of the twelfth and final stop on an epic pub crawl that five high school chums failed to complete after graduation. Cut two decades ahead and the leader of the pack Gary King (Pegg), who still wears the same cloths, drives the same car, and acts the same way, convinces his four, now professional, former friends with wives and lives to go back to their home town and finally complete the fabled Golden Mile drinkathon. As the four squares (played pitch perfect by Cornetto alums Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Eddie Marsan) follow their burnout beer buddy through their old haunts turned McPubs, the five of them begin to notice something weird going on among the familiar faces.
Though on paper this recalls Shaun of the Dead with robots instead of zombies, the similarities are strictly superficial. The blue-goo “blanks,” as they’re called, make for some exciting and splattery fight sequences in a film that’s more sci-fi/action than zombie horror, with a matured story about adulthood rather than the aimless twenties (fret not, the humor hasn’t matured). But the common threads throughout all of the Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost collaborations: drinking, hilarity, homage and a smidgen of heart, are all there in spades, and The World’s End feels like a natural progression from their previous films. To which, references abound. The most famous being the falling fence gag, but the jokes go much deeper than that, leaving a treasure trove of chuckles to be unearthed upon subsequent viewings, like the hilarious tavern names and their special significance. And as with the previous two films in the Cornetto Trilogy, I’m sure there will be many subsequent viewings of The World’s End in my house.
