Predicted Rating: 3 Stars
Directed by: Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz). Starring: Simon Pegg (Star Trek), Nick Frost (Paul) and Martin Freeman (The Hobbit).
The third installment in the Cornetto trilogy sees the washed up Gary King (Pegg) contemplating what has gone wrong in his life. He decides that the best moment of his life occurred on a night when he and his four friends attempted the golden mile, 12 pubs in one night. Twenty years later Gary wants to recreate the night so he gathers his friends Peter, Oliver (Freeman), Steven and Andrew (Frost) and they head back to the small town of Newton Haven. After an initial resistance from the team, the realise that the town of Newton Haven is inhabited by what appear to be robots so they must work together to uncover the secrets and save each other.
Like the other two installments of the Cornetto Trilogy, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, The World's End takes a unique and complex idea, i.e. a comedy about robots taking over the world, and makes it unbelievably simple. The characters are very solid. They are well established from the beginning, you know their good and bad qualities, who to hate and who to love, and eventually who will save the day. There is also substantial character development, something I value very highly but is often forgotten in modern cinema. There are also no plot holes, something that is very difficult to achieve. Each event in the movie is also spelled out as simply as possible so you always know what is going on and you are never left scratching your head thinking wait, I thought he was a robot. Often in American movies this means that everything seems like it is a big fat hamburger being shoved down your throat. However, in the Cornetto series, everything is done with that quaint British charm so the plot appears though it is a nice Sunday roast served on fine china with a pint of ale and a sprig of parsley on top to garnish.
Another thing that The World's end does well that a lot of other movies fail miserably at is drunk humour. In other films, the drunk characters seem too stereotypical, i.e. the stagger round, fall over and generally make an arse of themselves. This gives the appearance of the actors just acting like they are drunk. In the World's End, the actors genuinely appear drunk the entire film. This is because each character acts differently when they are drunk and there is a clear progression of drunkness for each drink, not just a black and white drunk/not drunk. The film also manages to include the character's being drunk as a clever plot device. You can tell whether they are a robot or not based on their drunk behaviour.
If there is one criticism I have of this film is that it drags out slightly too long. This is nothing new, many movies in the past have made the mistake of dragging the serious ending out for longer than it should. Whether this is because the writers have run out of ideas for jokes so they make the ending serious I am not sure. In my opinion, the difference between a good comedy and a brilliant one is to have you laughing to the end and it really never take itself seriously. Unfortunately the last 15 minutes of The World's end is too cliche and it masks the quality of the previous 95 minutes.
Final Rating: Not quite as good as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz but an enjoyable comedy none the less, 4 Stars
No comments:
Post a Comment