Film: The World's End

Director: Edgar Wright
Genre: Comedy
Source: UK (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Cinemark 24
Grade: A-

Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg close out their Cornetto trilogy in fine form with a sci-fi invasion film a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Day the Earth Stood Still (or any other number of old classics), but if you're here for the sci-fi, you must not be familiar with Wright and Pegg's work. What makes The World's End work--as with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz before it--is not the genre wrapper but the crisp rich comedy and the soft melty sentimental core. It's a film full of juvenile humor that is at heart about friendship and choice. Oh, and it's also probably the best addiction film I've ever seen.

What makes it all work, of course, is Wright's tightly controlled but anarchic-feeling direction, as his camera wheels around with such panache that you can't help but recognize the craftsmanship in it. He fills the film with so many sight gags, callbacks, quick references, under-the-breath jokes, and intelligent humor that at times it becomes impossible to keep up, and you find yourself laughing at something that happened a several beats earlier that your brain just barely had time to process. It works brilliantly, and it's what makes this trilogy so ripe for repeat viewing.

In a lot of ways, however, this is also the darkest of the three films. Sure, Shaun of the Dead may deal with the way we check out of our own lives, but The World's End takes that chastisement up a notch and forces us, through alcoholic/addict Gary King and his "best friend" Andy Knightley, to confront our demons and the ways we attempt to escape reality. We anesthetize ourselves through our drug of choice. We "Starbuck-ize" ourselves to individuality and accountability. We wear off our sharp edges and free will until nothing remains that would make us stick out. Gary King feeds his demons--drinking himself into a stupor while the world literally ends around him--but he's not the only one who is trying to run from his life, and the film suggest that perhaps we're all running from reality in our own ways.

It's the friendship between Pegg and Frost that really cements the film. As anyone who has reached something approaching middle age can attest, there is a fondness, and an embarrassment, and a nostalgia with which you look back on your high school age friendships, and inevitably reconnecting with those people ends up a little invigorating and a little disappointing. Pegg and Frost (Pegg this time playing the more obnoxious character, in a reversal from the first film in the trilogy) find that balance perfectly, and their climactic scene together really is moving. I love that these two can be so idiotic and over-the-top in one scene, and then legitimately sincere and moving in the next. It's their chemistry that really nails the film for me, and while the supporting cast is all sharp, these two raise the material to a more entertaining--as well as a more profound--level.

That's not to say everything in the film is perfect. The climax of the film falls a little flat, as Gary's Big Speech ends up feeling a little emptier than I would have hoped. And the epilogue, while funny, feels like a little bit of a misstep, not satisfactorily (though perhaps appropriately) closing out the drama and excitement we've just seen before. It's ok, but it's not great, and it made the film close on one of its weaker notes.

Still, in all, I can't help but love this film. I'm sad that the Cornetto trilogy has to end, and I can only hope that Wright, Pegg, and Frost enjoy working together enough that we'll see future teamings from them. They're really one of the great comic teams working today, if you ask me.

Alternate Film Title: None needed.