Musings on the End: A Second Take On ‘The World’s End’

The World’s End is the third installment in The Three Flavors of Cornetto trilogy (also known as the Blood and Cornetto Trilogy–personally I think of them as the Blood, Cornetto, and Simon-Pegg-Falling-Over-Fences Trilogy). I won’t say final; Douglas Adams has proven that when it comes to oddball, speculative, brilliant British entertainment, trilogy does not mean three.

Here’s hoping, at any rate.

The trilogy refers to the Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright collaboration of movies: Shaun of the Dead

Hot Fuzz

and now The World’s End.

Each has blood (you’ve got red on…) and different flavored cornettos appear at least once in each movie (strawberry, original and mint, respectively). For those of you who don’t know what a cornetto is, to the google with you.

Pegg co-wrote the movie with Wright, and co-stared in it with Nick Frost (along with the full merry band of Blood-and-Cornetto-ites, who appear, in varying degrees, in every movie).

Besides blood, cornettos, cast mates and Pegg falling over fences, the film shares the same sense of gleeful joy and deprecating self-awareness that made Shaun of the Dead an instant hit and elevated parts of Hot Fuzz to sheer comedic genius.

It lacks, perhaps, the homage that Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz had, in parts satirical and in parts sincere, to the great movies that had gone before them in their genre; it’s social commentary doesn’t have the light, piercing touch that Shaun of the Dead did, nor does it use parody paired with comic, over-the-top violence to explore bonding, community and friendshi– and the depths to which we would go to defend those things–as well as Hot Fuzz. 

The World’s End tries too hard sometimes, is a little too on-the-nose at others—it gets a little loud and a little in your face and a little dark; and at the end the biggest emotion is a dazed sense of “WTF, boys, WTF?”

So, just like a night of hard drinking, when you think about it.

The movie starts slow, with a voice over and flashback sequence that not only proves unnecessary—the information is immediately given again in dialogue between the now-adult, estranged friends—but also deflates the power and impact of most of the reveals later in the movie.

However, once we get past the over-exposed-so-you-know-it’s-a-flashback beginning, the movie picks up.

Pegg plays Gary King, a somewhere-near-forty-year-old who has decided that his only chance at feeling anything is to complete the twelve-pub crawl in his hometown that he and his five high school friends were unable to finish twenty years prior.

Through lies, manipulation and a cocky inability to hear the word no, he reunites them with the plan of drinking one pint (or more) at each of the 12 pubs in LechtWorth, New Haven.

The next hour or so is a rollicking good time, with excellent dialogue—the comedic talent onscreen is enormous, and the witty give and take between the core five friends is hugely enjoyable and quite often hilarious.

The story of a lonely, lost man trying to recapture his youth any way he can is handled well—if sometimes relying a little too much on a known trope or two—and the rescue-the-town-from-the-evil-not-quite-robots-and-don’t-forget-to-save-the-girl is a fun, fast-paced adventure, liberally sprinkled with some exceptional fight choreography (there is a bit with Pegg and a pint that is particularly good). Nick Frost, especially, shows not only a moving amount of emotional depth but also an unexpected ability to kick major ass.

And, it must be mentioned, kudos to Simon Pegg, his costumer, and his hair/make-up people, for making him actually sexy as bad-boy Gary King.

By the time we get to the eighth pub (or was it the seventh…) the movie has more than made up for slow start; if a few things seemed too easily explained away, if one or two decisions seemed unclear, the pace was so fast, the acting so good, the dialogue so clever, that we were willing to forgive the odd slip here and there.

And then we got to the World’s End, the last pub.

And there the movie stumbled quite a bit.

The dialogue went from crisp and droll to histrionic and sermonizing (though there was an excellent cameo by Bill Nighy); the plot suddenly took a left turn (no spoilers, I promise) and then, just as you settled down in the new direction, it took a sharp right.

And then it added a voice over.

It was not ever a bad movie; at times it was a brilliant movie. It did have more weak points then the other two installments; it was also took much braver, larger choices. The World’s End was almost perfect; the story it wanted to tell was large and grand and even a little bit beautiful; but in the end it didn’t quite know what to do it with it.

So then there were explosions. ‘Cause explosions are cool.

All in all, it’s a recommend, but maybe at the matinee ticket price.

3.5/5