The World's End

And the world was no more.  The apocalypse came and all we know and love was reduced to ash and smoldering ruin...  But I'm not here to discuss the fan reaction to Ben Affleck being cast as Batman, this is a review about Edgar Wright's latest flick (and 3rd in the "Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy") The World's End.  While the Batman announcement generated enough publicity and created a hashmark surplus large enough to shade and texture the Japanese Manga industry for two centuries, Wright, Pegg, Frost, and the rest of the usual suspects put out yet another ridiculously entertaining movie.

Pegg takes on the role Gary King, 12-step Escapee and lead instigator to a group of five formerly hard-drinking, hard-partying British youths, now all grown up with careers and wives, etc. aside for Gary, who remains obsessed with (among other things) completing a 12-pub challenge that he failed so many years ago.  A time when bands like Depeche Mode, The Pixies, Sonic Youth, and Janes Addiction were all the rage.  (Holy crap, just rattling those bands off makes me kind of nostalgic for the early 90's.)

Gary is an annoying alcoholic who still manages to convince his mature friends to reluctantly head back to their hometown and make one final attempt at the epic pub crawl known as "the Golden Mile".  The performance is very good and a nice change from the previous two movies where Frost was the one playing Id to Pegg's more responsible characters.  It's a good thing he can keep your attention and only be borderline too annoying, because the film for about forty minutes has nothing to do with robots or aliens.  I almost feel like I should tag that as a spoiler, because if you came into this movie knowing nothing about it (or Wright and Pegg's film making history together), you'd think this was one of those charming English Comedies like the The Full Monty, Billy Elliot, or when Jeremy Clarkson beat up Piers Morgan.

But yes, a little more than a third into the movie, things get more than a little out of hand as they tend to do in Edgar Wright movies (and real-life pub crawls).  There's an alien invasion, replicants, well-choreographed fight scenes that get more outrageous as the characters build up Super Saiyan levels of Dutch Courage with every pint consumed.  Throughout it all, they actually manage to keep a hold on the human elements, something that sometimes goes missing in the big action "blockbuster" movies when it becomes about how many CG buildings the FX house can annihilate.  There's a strange anti nanny-state message throughout that I didn't expect, but totally dig because with all the government spying stuff in the news nowadays, (Hi NSA, if you're reading this, please click on my Amazon Affiliate links!) a lot of people seem pretty concerned about being free...  To do what they want...  Any old time.