End of the world as we know it

FILM REVIEW

The World’s End
DIRECTED BY: Edgar Wright
STARRING: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan
CERT: 15A

OK, don’t look now but… well, how should I put this? It would appear the Apocalypse is upon us. I’m not saying it is and it might never happen. It’s just that the immediate future doesn’t look too bright.

On a positive note, there’s going to be plenty of beer.

Gary King (Pegg) has a fondness for the beer. He also has certain issues that make him an unpleasant man to be around. A chap whose best years are long gone, he’s a bit of an obnoxious pup and the therapy doesn’t seem to be doing him much good. Until one day a group session sparks off a mad notion; he will round up his old friends and relive the best day of the glory days.

That was the day, in 1990, when secondary school ended and the lads went on the tear, attempting to complete the Golden Mile – a pub crawl with 12 stops, 12 pints, starting with The First Post and finishing at The World’s End. Turns out they weren’t quite up to the task, but now Gary wants to give it another shot.

As it happens, the old friends have drifted apart and unlike Gary, the others have grown up, settled down and made a go of it. Steven (Considine) is an architect with a fit younger woman in his life; Oliver (Freeman) is an estate agent and Peter (Marsan) sells cars. Still and all, they agree to the reunion, but only on the condition that lawyer Andy (Frost) comes along. There’s bad blood there with Gary and it doesn’t get better when Andy reveals he’s been off the drink for 10 years.
Reunited in their old hometown of Newton Haven, the musketeers (“Nobody knows how many there were, really, do they?”) waste no time hitting the bars. They’re not long into the crawl when they notice that things aren’t quite the same.

For one thing, the pubs themselves are a bit crap – renovated, retro-fitted and corporatised to within an inch of their lives. If you’re over a certain age, you’ll know why it’s just not right. You will feel that pain in your own soul.
But the people have changed, too and not quite in the same way your town and its people seem to change if you’ve been away in, say, Australia for a few years. Generally speaking, emigrants don’t return to the ’auld sod to discover that the village is now populated by robots from outer space.
Which is not giving anything away here, nothing you haven’t seen in the trailers.

The creative trio behind this caper – writer/director Edgar Wright, star and co-writer Pegg and cohort Frost – have said they wanted the previews to make it clear this was a sci-fi comedy, in case anyone got the idea it was merely a film about a bunch of lads drinking. As if that might be bad.

Anyway, it’s going to take more than a few hundred killer androids (the influences are many, Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers among the most obvious) to stop the boys from reaching The World’s End this time, maybe even literally. They’re joined on the mission by Oliver’s sister, Sam (Rosamund Pike), who brings an extra touch of tension to the gang, rekindling old flames and opening old wounds. But it’s a bit of a token role, as it always is for the ladies in these films.

The Cornetto Trilogy, as the series has become known (this is the last, after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) is all about the boys.
World’s End is a decent enough way to round it off, though it’s probably their weakest effort. It’s a bit over-written and too many of the gags are either old or feel forced, a bit too desperate for the laughs. The cast are fine, for the most part, and it’s nice to see Pegg and Frost stepping out of their old comfort zones and tackling a different kind of character. It would have been even better if Pegg’s Gary wasn’t a complete tool altogether, an utterly unlikeable prat.

I don’t think it would be possible for these guys to get together and not produce at least a few good laughs. While they’re at it, they manage to say a few interesting things about growing up, growing apart, going home and the joys and perils of nostalgia.

Of course, one of the obvious pleasures in that is recalling the music of your youth – and if the late ’80s/early ’90s was your era, the soundtrack will take you back to the tunes of Blur, Pulp, The Happy Mondays and The Soup Dragons. The Sisters of Mercy get several nods in too.

The World’s End is not the riot of laughs it could have been, but there’s just about enough here to make it worth the journey.