Last call: The World's End

“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” Truer words were never spoken – because sometimes the bars are ready to close, despite the fact that we’re still game for another round.

Comedic conspirators Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright began their giddy assault on our sensibilities with 2004’s undead opus, Shaun of the Dead. In 2007 they skewered the buddy-cop genre with Hot Fuzz and now they bring their “Cornetto” trilogy to a close with the daftly inspired sci-fi saga, The World’s End – it’s an intoxicating concept: Ne’er-do-well aging bad boy Gary King is determined to reunite the chums of his youth together to finally complete The Golden Mile – an epic pub crawl with a dozen stops – 12 pubs, 12 pints, culminating at a pub called “The World’s End.” Gary (Pegg, also cowriter with Wright) is stuck in the past and a raging alcoholic to boot – his friends have grown up, married, and taken respectable jobs at law firms, while Gary is still playing the loser-rebel. It’s shocking at first to see Nick Frost as the respectable, more humorless one, determined to stick to water for the evening. “A man of your legendary prowess? It’s like a lion eating hummus!”

After a slow start, the film picks up and dives into science fiction – surprisingly with not as many direct cinematic riffs as we’d previously seen in Shaun and Fuzz. Pegg and Wright deserve credit for changing the rhythms and expectations from the previous two outings, but the Pegg/Frost role-reversal lets some of the wind out of the sails. There’s a melancholy to Pegg’s boozy Peter Pan desperation to return to the glory days of the past. Not everything works, but the dialogue and jokes and exasperation of the characters more than makes up for it. I enjoyed the heck out of the movie, but I’m still not sure if it ranks as high as Shaun or Fuzz for me. I suspect it may benefit greatly from subsequent viewings. There’s no shortage of gags and I think I missed my fair share due to laughing so hard at others. There’s no question though that The World’s End is a fitting companion piece to Pegg and Wright’s previous films, all of which make use of genre conventions to satirize.

If you’re a fan of Pegg, Frost or Wright – or pubs, for that matter – you’re probably as presold as I was! You’re probably going to love The World’s End – and want to revisit it again. My hope is that this is in fact not the end of this fantastic team, and that this trio continues tapping fresh kegs for many years to come. Another round, if you please!