The World's End

The Cornetto trilogy has sadly come to a close, nine years after Shaun of the Dead. The World’s End is yet another riotously intelligent Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg-penned film, relying not only on simpleton wit and sound comic timing but poignant social allusions to the golden age of irresponsible youth. Instead of the zombie homage of Shaun of the Dead or the police action thriller references in Hot Fuzz, the duo focus on robot-science-fiction and clever aliens. In that sense it’s sort of a Doctor Who episode only with more drinking and swearing.

Dan King (Pegg) is the immoral cad still wallowing in the hedonism of his 90s teenage heyday, attempting to get his tight-knit drinking cronies back together for a pub crawl they failed to complete in their youth. It’s an attempt to return his life back to those glory days – and one night in particular. He is a man still yearning for those days: he sports the same kind of New Romantics look as back then and listens to the same music (a soundtrack full of 90s gems from the likes of Primal Scream, Stone Roses and Happy Mondays), and pales in comparison to the successful careers and families his comrades have since embarked since then. Psychoanalysing the central character isn’t really the point though. Anyway, he gets them together (Martin Freeman, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan) and they have a pint in twelve different pubs around their home town of Newton Haven, finishing in the eponymous World’s End. But they find that their dreary home has lost its quirky locations and charisma in the face of the franchise obsessed modern society, with characterless lookalike pubs caustically mocked. Plus the inhabitants they had previously known have become alien robots with sloshy blue mechanical blood (not unlike the white stuff the androids have in the Alien films).

On a serious note, it’s a smart commentary on how the confining bureaucracies and franchises of our modern internet world have sucked the life out of towns and replaced it with the kind of vacuous, safe-for-all-ages grey yawn. On a silly note, it’s a just an excuse to smash robots and cover ourselves in blue goo and lipstick. The World’s End is also a faithful portrayal of what growing up in an English village is like – desperately dull.

Underpinned by a typically superb cast, The World’s End doesn’t immediately seem to possess the cult classic traits of the others but maybe that’s just a status it will acquire over time. There are some odd plays – like Frost playing a profession-driven square who is completely unlike any other of his weirdly foolish characters – but this is still a fine comedy worthy of its place in the much-loved Cornetto canon.