“The World’s End” has the most fitting movie title of the summer. After an apocalyptic “World War Z,” abysmal adventure flick “After Earth” and so many more of the same fictionally destructive caliber, a blatantly world-ending comedy seems like the kind of film to place squarely at the butt of it all.
Yet the third film in Edgar Wright’s “Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy,” following 2004’s “Shaun of the Dead” and 2007’s “Hot Fuzz,” is much more than that. It’s a send-off in the most dazzling fashion, a conclusion that proves that there is always a gleam of hope after the dust settles, and moving on isn’t the end of the world.
As with the previous two films, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost star as eccentric friends unaware of the chaos they are about to get themselves into, but this time more disjointed. Pegg plays Gary King, a middle-aged alcoholic attached to the good old days when he and his group of teenage friends attempted the most epic trek in their hometown, “The Golden Mile.” King and his gang had originally failed the journey, a bar crawl consisting of visits to 12 pubs in one night, but King’s reminiscent gaze attracts him back to succeed where his younger self failed.
He gathers together the now family- and career-focused members of his group, including three curious cohorts (Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman and Paddy Considine) and one member reluctant to join over past events (Frost). The journey from bar to bar to their final destination, The World’s End, at first appears somber and aged beyond much recognition. But as the stubborn Pegg drags the boys along, they find themselves scrapping not only for their drifting youth, but also on a hilariously absurd fight for all of mankind.
Where “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” took big steps to disconnect themselves from reality, “The World’s End” takes gigantic leaps. The film starts quietly enough, defining each stars’ thematically connected character personality: an unhappy and infatuated Considine, a lifelong lackey in Marsan, a terrified-of-growing-up Pegg. All the way down to the metaphoric names of each successive pub, the humor takes a slow but very steady approach to setting up for what comes next.
With an abrupt, plot-twisting altercation a few pubs in and a buzzed cast of five very confused men, “The World’s End” accelerates into the position of one of the best comedies of the year.
Following a plot of preposterous proportions, the gang is committed to their drunken roles as if the world relied on it, and having a blast doing so. Frost, especially, delivers some of the best moments of the film as a troubled man coming out of his hardened shell.
The true hero of the story is Wright, who has learned an important lesson from his previous directorial works: that lessons are for twits.
“Shaun of the Dead” had an odd mix of comedy and drama behind its increasingly witty gags, so “The World’s End” throws in more life lessons and genre conventions. “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” relied on a repetitive series of tasks rather than being entertaining for the screen, so Wright made this story about an old man bar crawl, wholesomely mixed with a maddening amount of nonsense. His style is more ambitious than ever, and a great majority will find that utterly delightful.
Almost a decade since the trilogy started, Wright, Pegg and Frost have clearly aged. Like the movie’s band of fellows, they’re losing their youth, and it would be far easier to conform to what society has in mind for them than to fall back on the fun-filled filming spirit of their past. Instead, they defy the standard structure of the many unsavory blockbuster comedies of recent, delivering a praiseworthy finale in the process.
And what better manner to do so than what they know best: Grab your friends, go to the end of the world, have a nice cold pint and wait for all of this to blow over.