Monday, November 16, 2015

Your Face Picks Movies (Nolahn): The World's End

Film: The World’s End
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

This is the eleventh in a series of twelve movies selected by the guys at YourFace. This is Nolahn’s fourth and final pick.

Third movies in a trilogy are often a disappointment. Think of all the trilogies where things punk out in the third film: X-Men, Spider-Man, Alien, The Godfather…the list goes on. So it is that I avoided The World’s End, the third film of Edgar Wright’s unofficial Cornetto Trilogy, for fear that it wouldn’t live up to the cinematic joys of Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. Nolahn wouldn’t let me get away with that, though, so here we are.

Gary King (Simon Pegg) is working on a career as a wastrel and alcoholic finishes what looks like a 12-step meeting where he relates the story of the best night of his life—an attempt to have a pint at all 12 pubs in his home town. This feat, known as the Golden Mile, was abandoned. In an attempt to reclaim that past glory, Gary decides to track down his four estranged high school friends and reattempt the feat.

There’s a reason that his friends don’t really want to reconnect with Gary, though. As it happens, Gary’s present form is merely an older version of the Gary that existed years before. He’s selfish, belligerent, and has no self-control. By contrast, his friends all of careers. Undaunted by this, Gar tracks down Peter (Eddie Marsan), Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine), and finally Andy (Nick Frost) to recreate the attempt to complete the Golden Mile. None of them really want to do this, but see it as something like an attempt at closure.

The evening gets off to a rocky start when Gary finds out that Andy no longer drinks. Gary makes a continuous ass of himself, including hitting on Oliver’s sister Sam (Rosamund Pike). And then, partway through the new version of the pub crawl, all hell breaks loose. Gary picks a fight with a kid in the restroom of the fourth pub and discovers much to his shock that the kid is actually some sort of android. It soon becomes evident that a good percentage of the town has been converted into androids. The group decides that the best thing to do is continue going from pub to pub and attempt to figure out what is happening. Slowly but surely they all become drunker and drunker and the situation becomes more and more dire.

So let’s get to the meat and potatoes here. First, Edgar Wright knows how to film an action sequence. In fact, it’s the action sequences that do the most to kill any idea of the suspension of disbelief. Our characters become drunker as the film progresses, but they never seem to suffer any problems when it comes to hand-to-hand combat with the androids (which they call “blanks’). This really isn’t a problem with the film, though. It works in the sense that nothing here is really supposed to make a great deal of sense, and the action sequences are a lot of fun.

Wright is also a very smart filmmaker. He’s able to do more than just have his characters say funny things. There are a lot of visual jokes here as there are in all of his films. Another connection to the other two Cornetto films is the fact that anything a character says actually happens at some point in the film. Things get repeated, happening or being said once innocently and again with much more serious repercussions. This is the brilliance of Wright’s films, or at least Wright’s films with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The World’s End has the same style of humor as the previous two films, and that works to its benefit.

So what’s the problem? Why does it feel like I’m not as excited about this as I am about Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz? The answer to this is back at the start of this review. The World’s End is the least of the three Cornetto films, and it’s the least by a fair margin. This isn’t specifically a knock on the film. Shaun of the Dead is one of the best horror comedies ever made and I like Hot Fuzz more than I like Shaun of the Dead. The World’s End would have to be almost perfect just to be playing in the same ballpark, and it’s not almost perfect.

The biggest issue is that the driving force of the plot—an alien invasion that is replacing people Body Snatchers-style—comes completely out of nowhere. There’s no indication that this is where we’re going. I realize that this would be how something like this would be discovered, but it comes completely out of left field here, and it doesn’t work as well as it could. All three of the Cornetto films deal with something completely implausible, but this seems like the most implausible of the three, and it suffers because of it.

Don’t get me wrong; this is still a very entertaining film and I had a lot of fun watching it. But there’s a part of it that feels like it’s trying too hard. Even brilliant cameos from Pierce Brosnan, David Bradley, and the voice of Bill Nighy can’t change this fact. I like it, but I can’t help but be a little disappointed in it.

Regardless, this is still a win. That puts the YourFace crew at 9.5 for 11.

Why to watch The World’s End: It’s completely insane.
Why not to watch: It’s the least of the Cornetto Trilogy.

17 comments:

  1. I liked this one, but like you said, not as much as Hot Fuzz.

    If it helps, it's not the third film of a trilogy, not even unofficially (unless you take Edgar Wright's sarcastic response to an interviewer seriously.) Having the same ice cream in three films does not a trilogy make. Sam Raimi has the same car in all of his films; Edgar Wright has the same ice cream. Calling it a trilogy is just easier than saying "the three Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg/Nick Frost films".

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    1. Ah, but I'm not calling it a trilogy. "The Cornetto Trilogy" is a thing that really exists. These films are tied thematically in ways and in how they are filmed. In their own ways, each of these is a coming-of-age film for Simon Pegg's character among other things.

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    2. Sorry, but that's B.S. that Wright came up with after his sarcastic comment gained traction and fans asked for more details on how this was "the same as Kieslowski's Three Colors Trilogy", which is what Wright joked. He had used two different flavors of ice cream in the first two films (the first as a joke, the second as a callback to the joke), but because they were different flavors they had different colors of wrappings around them. Wright did then deliberately not only include a shot of a wrapper in the third film, but he also used a third color. In the first two films there was no attempt whatsoever to connect them and the colors of the ice cream wrappers were completely random. It's only after his offhand joke after the second movie got popular that he did do something intentionally with the wrapper in the third film.

      He's also had jokes with fences in all three films. You could just as accurately refer to these three films as "the Fence Trilogy."

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    3. Ah, but no. It may have started as a joke, but Wright actually went back into the screenplay for The World's End to deal with some of the same basic themes addressed in both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz to make a more thematic link between the three films, specifically about arrested development and the refusal to take on adult responsibilities. All three are, at their hearts, a movie about the relationships with the horror/buddy cop/science fiction elements take place as the setting for those relationships.

      In Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg's character is in a state of arrested development. By the end of the film he's grown some and become more responsible, but he's still playing video games in the shed with his zombie friend. In Hot Fuzz, Pegg's character is on the surface the opposite end of the spectrum. He's all work, no play. But he's also attempting to fulfill his childhood fantasy of being the perfect cop. By the end, he's still a cop, but he's learned to joke around with his co-workers. In The World's End, Pegg's character goes from wastrel to someone who ultimately confronts his demons and who, by the end, may still be living that child fantasy, but is a leader of "men."

      There's a progression of theme here that links all three films beyond the fence joke and the ice cream.

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    4. I agree that his character grew in each films, but then again pretty much every film Pegg is in as the star contains a story where he has to grow as a person - Paul, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Big Nothing, Burke & Hare, Run Fatboy Run, Absolutely Anything (real movie name), plus the three Wright films. And those are just the ones I've seen. Playing a manchild is kind of his thing - like Adam Sandler playing an idiot.

      I agree that Wright fed into the trilogy joke when he made the third film but sorry, a concept implemented only when the third film is being made is retconning, pure and simple - no different from Lucas deciding Darth Vader is Luke's father in the second film and Leia is his sister in the third film when there was no concept of those things in the earlier films, no matter how much Lucas tries to make us believe it. I give Wright all the credit in the world about being upfront about his retconning and not trying to hide it like Lucas.

      So, shall we discuss whether the Man With No Name and Cavalry Trilogies are or are not really trilogies? :-)

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    5. I accept the both as trilogies, actually. The Cavalry Trilogy is at least based on the work of the same author.

      I don't really see it as mattering much whether or not a group of films are or aren't an actual trilogy, a manufactured trilogy, or a trilogy cobbled together by fandom. Commonalities are commonalities.

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  2. I actually think, after repeat viewings and digging into the film, this is actually the best written of the three films. It's the deepest, strongest, and most heartfelt of the trilogy. However, it is the least fun of the three (except for the action sequences). Shaun is still my favorite, then Fuzz, then this. But I will remain on record feeling that this is written so much stronger than people give it credit for.

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    1. I'm not taking anything away from it--it may be the least of the three, but it's certainly not a film that falls into that "third of a trilogy" curse. I enjoyed it, but compared with the other two on a lot of different levels, it's just not the same.

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  3. Film Crit Hulk has a fantastic write-up on THE WORLD'S END. Read through the comments, too. I think this is one of the richest film in the past few years.

    http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2013/10/03/film-crit-hulk-smash-alcohol-withnail-and-gary-king

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    1. I'll give it a look once I get through this week's grading.

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  4. Wasn't the biggest fan of this film. My short review here.

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  5. Oh, yeah: if you haven't seen this, it's worth a view. High praise for Edgar Wright.

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    1. I'm assuming the link is to the "Every Frame a Painting" video about Wright's comedy direction. I have seen that. My connection is weird at the moment and keeps timing out.

      I thought this was entertaining, but I get your point on British science fiction. Even things that might be considered minor classics of the genre, like Quatermass and the Pit come across as a little slipshod.

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  6. I'm glad you enjoyed this, even if you think of it as the "least" of the Cornetto Trilogy. I can get why you and others might feel that way -- it's not an uncommon opinion -- but I think it's the smartest and by far the most ambitious of the three, and that Gary King is the most complex character I've seen in quite a long time.

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    1. Well, least of these three is hardly damning since Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are both classics in my opinion.

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    1. It's a nice little hidden joke that all of Gary's friends have surnames that equate to essentially a king's counsellors.

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