Review: THE WORLD'S END

THE WORLD'S END  (ACTION-COMEDY/SCI-FI)
Three and a Half Stars out of Four
Directed by Edgar Wright
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan
R for pervasive language including sexual references.
Verdict: Although it's too soon to fully assess where it fits into the "Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy," THE WORLD'S END finishes the trilogy strongly, and is a fast, funny and layered comedy.  It's of a slightly different brand than its brothers, SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ, but usually in good ways, such as flipping the tables on the Simon Pegg-Nick Frost character dynamics, and it's just an overall fascinating twist on the Body Snatchers tale.
YOU MAY LIKE THE WORLD'S END IF YOU LIKED:
SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004)
HOT FUZZ (2007)
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (2010)
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)
SLITHER (2006) 

English writer/director Edgar Wright is a great filmmaker rising fast within the industry, despite never having directed a major hit (although he co-wrote Steven Spielberg's international hit, THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN).  His films, however, have consistently had more successful shelf lives as cult classics with highly-devoted fan-bases, and hopefully he'll be able to hit mainstream popularity in 2015, when his addition to Marvel's Avengers, ANT-MAN hits theaters.  What may remain the crown jewel of his career though, or, at least for the early stage of his film-making career, is the "Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy," also known as the "Cornetto Trilogy," or the "Blood & Ice Cream Trilogy."  For us Yanks unfamiliar with the brand name, Cornetto is a brand of ice cream, which, much like a Drumstick ice cream cone, is a store-bought, factory-packaged ice cream cone.  In the 2004 zombie apocalypse comedy, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, it was strawberry; in the 2007 satiric buddy-cop action-comedy, HOT FUZZ, it was the "original blue" (whatever the hell that means).  A more relevant connection through the trilogy is the teaming of writer/director Wright, writer/star Simon Pegg and co-star Nick Frost, while paying homage to a sub-genre of film, from zombies, to super-cops, and now, alien invasions.
THE WORLD'S END is the deepest, and seems to be the most personal, of the trilogy, covering themes of middle age, alienation from and obsession with selected memories, human individuality and societal order.  Quite an assortment of ambitions for a low-brow sci-fi-comedy, no?
In 1990, five friends, with their ringleader, Gary "The King" King (Simon Pegg), set forth on an epic quest in their hometown of Newton Haven.  Their goal: the Golden Mile; and infamous pub crawl through twelve pubs, a pint of ale for each man at each pub.  The final pub on the map was The World's End, but none of them ever made it so far, and it was the greatest time of Gary's entire life, so the prologue informs us.  Twenty years later, the boys; Gary, Oliver "O-Man" Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), an uptight Bluetooth-wielding real estate agent; Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), a recently-divorced architect who still holds a grudge over a romantic rivalry with Gary;  Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), the wimpy tag-along of the group who now sells cars for with his dad; and Andrew Knightley (Nick Frost), a stuffy lawyer who used to be Gary's best mate before something happened that destroyed their friendship; have all grown-up and moved on, except for Gary, who remains hopelessly trapped in the dreams of that one night when he was King, drank 11 pints and had a moment with Oliver's sister, Sam (Rosamund Pike), in one of the pub bathroom stalls.  But they never did make it to The World's End, and so, very much like a wraith returning from the past, Gary shows up to pull his old mates back together so that they can return to Newton Haven and go for the Golden Mile once more.  Once there, however, they make a series of discoveries that indicate the town that they thought they left behind is not what they thought it was, or even what it really was, parallel to the discoveries that they make about one another and who they really are, as opposed to who they thought they were.

In a summer that had an IRON MAN movie, Gary King is still the biggest asshole of a protagonist.

I love SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ (with SHAUN getting a slight edge), but it took a couple of viewings to really appreciate them for myself, and I suspect repeat viewings are warranted for THE WORLD'S END to be better appreciated, but even then, the value of repeated viewing is clear here simply to pick out all the parallels and contrasts between the interwoven layers of this intelligent film.  There are quite a few things going on here, and a lot of it has multiple meanings at play, even when the most apparent going-ons may seem so ridiculous.
Wright's top-notch knowledge of cinema makes it especially fun for movie buffs, as the film pays tribute, both very subtle and unspecific, and directly addressed, to classic films, in this case, largely of the sci-fi conspiracy thrillers that hit their peak during the second Red Scare and which John Carpenter revived in the 1980s, such as THEY LIVE!, among others.  Those who are not cinema aficionados are unlikely to feel left out though, as the jokes are fast and hilarious, the action is inventive and furious, and the relationships and emotions are real and honest enough for almost any audience member.
As THE WORLD'S END wraps up a very lackluster summer full of bland and generic bombast, it's a pleasant consolation to get something as refreshing, inventive, wise and heartfelt as this.