Comedy duo delight

Before there was Jason Segal and Paul Rudd in 2009s I Love You, Man, there was Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

This comedy duo defines the true meaning of ‘bro-mance’. They have been friends, both on and off screen, for over a decade, delighting fans with their friendship and comedic brilliance.

In 2004 they teamed up with director Edgar Wright and released Shaun of the Dead, proving that you can’t beat the Brits when it comes to genuine and shocking laughs.

Three years later, the Pegg-Frost-Wright threesome returned for the buddy cop action film Hot Fuzz, which didn’t live up to its predecessor, but still gave Michael Bays 1995 hit, Bad Boys, a run for its money.

The World’s End draws a curtain on this Cornetto trilogy (named after the ice cream brand that makes an appearance in all three films). It’s no Shaun of the Dead, or Hot Fuzz for that matter, but it still manages to entertain and enthrall.
 
It reflects perfectly on mankind’s inability to leave the past behind and captures the exact sense of gloom I feel when acknowledging that I have finally grown up … but there’s nothing wrong with being nostalgic.

Gone are the days of staying up all-night and trying to accomplish silly adventures … well, for some anyway!

For others, like Gary King (Pegg), who is nearing 40, the Newton Haven’s Golden Mile 12-bar crawl is exactly what he needs to achieve to feel fulfilled.

So, he gathers a group of childhood friends and encourages them to return to their hometown of Newton Haven in order to finish the adventure they failed to complete in their younger days.
 
Hesitant at first, Andrew (Frost), Peter (Eddie Marsan), Oliver (Martin Freeman) and Steven (Paddy Considine) finally agree after falling for Gary’s tales.

However, while all his friends now have professional careers and the usual responsibilities of adulthood, Gary has spent the past decade unemployed!

Gary picks them up in the same car he had in high school and puts the same mix tape Steven gave him when they were 18 into the tape player and they make their way back home. Nothing seems to have changed, not even Newton Haven. Everything is exactly the way they left it, other than the fact that the people barely remember them and the pubs seem to have been bought out by a chain.

As they make their way through the night, they realise that the town has actually become the home of an extraterrestrial invasion, where they have cloned the DNA of the residents to make blue goo-oozing robots instead.
There’s only one thing the boys can do to stay out of trouble – carry on with their mission and make it to the last venue, The World’s End.

Along the way they rekindle friendships, save each other, find love, kick robot butt, and most importantly finish The Golden Mile!

For Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fans, this film has everything to keep you satisfied. Even the talented supporting actors help make this movie brilliant, along with the creative fight scenes and the action figure aliens. Jumble all these elements together and Wright can’t go wrong.

Although Pegg and Frost are the glue that holds the plot together, and clearly they deliver, it is the ‘other’ friends that help bring something new to a familiar plot.

Marsan and Freeman perfectly play the nerdy-yet-goofy pair in the group and Considine definitely stands out as the inconsolable teenager-at-heart, going after his long lost love.

If there’s one thing the movie can take pride in it’s that Wright knows how to build on character development and tells the audience each individual’s story. Not only do viewers feel like they know the characters, or someone similar to them, but they can relate on some level.

The World’s End is a great conclusion to the trilogy filled with nostalgia-fueled antics. Although it doesn’t live up to Shaun of the Dead and may have been 20 minutes too long, it is still hilarious, at times frightful and completely heartfelt.

* Showing in Cineco, Seef II