In the British farce The World’s End, five guys return to their sleepy hometown for a fabled pub crawl through all twelve local establishments – and find their old neighbors infiltrated by robot monsters from outer space (a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers). The central joke is that four of them have matured into forty-year-olds with families and careers, and they have been manipulated into this escapade by the fifth who is still stuck at age eighteen. That guy, well-played by Simon Pegg, still dresses and acts as he did in high school (and still drives the same car) – and he doesn’t see why that is not OK. The clash between this man-boy and the four regular guys is funny, and then the filmmakers add a send-up of the alien monster genre.
It’s a stellar crew – besides, Pegg, our heroes include Nick Frost (Pegg’s partner in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Martin Freeman (those movies plus The Office), Paddy Considine (In America, Red Riding) and Eddie Marsan (Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky, Ray Donovan). The usually upper crusty Rosamund Pike is a good sport, too.
I wish it were as funny as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but Pegg’s earnestly immature bozo and the silliness of the alien robots can only take The World’s End so far. It’s mildly entertaining with some LOL moments, but not a Must See.
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