Cast: Rosamund Pike, Simon Pegg, Martin Freeman
Director: Edgar Wright
Country: UK
Genre: Action | Comedy | Sci-Fi
Official Site: Here
Editor’s Notes: The World’s End is out on Blu-ray and DVD Nov 19th. Special Features include: Completing the Golden Mile: The Making of The World’s End, Filling in the Blanks: The Stunts and FX of The World’s End, and Edgar & Simon’s Flip Chart.
Edgar Wright continues his series of comedies that capture the heart of the transformation of friendship necessitated by the inevitable resignation of spirit that comes with growing old and responsible. Simon Pegg plays the adolescent trapped in time this go around, and as Gary King he is endearingly brutish; a troubled man with a broken spirit that is futilely brash in the face other-worldly adversity. He puts his hopes in recapturing the time when he was truly king, but the post-Thatcher indignation of British youth has cooled down a bit in the last twenty years and an all too real homogenization has been slowly overtaking the world, erasing the diversity of small towns worldwide as really cool gadgets keep us complacent in our current climate of docile global corporatism. The World’s End eschews genre classifications as it combines poignant satire with a touching dramatic core, eventually jumping the rails entirely but remaining true to the emotional center that allows it to be illogically believable amidst the absurdities of its fantastic plot.
Edgar Wright continues his series of comedies that capture the heart of the transformation of friendship necessitated by the inevitable resignation of spirit that comes with growing old and responsible.
There is a worldwide pacification of the righteous indignation of youth, and this change has made us far too conscientious for dangerous activities unless they involve narcissistic empowerment and a flashy new Facebook profile picture. The righteous stupidity of drinking games and harmless self-destruction have been exposed for their dangerous repercussions and we no longer want to endure Monday after a weekend of explosive decompression. Friendships are no longer about you and them against the rest of the world as your friends now have a vested interest in that world for financial stability. We toil away without pleasure to ensure the security of an equally joyless old age, it is only natural that we should be plagued by the need for foolish self-destruction every now and then. Gary King is the only one from his group of friends that remembers the simple joys of righteous stupidity, and despite his permanent state of infantile impulsiveness he manages to coerce the original members of his crew for one more shot at the “Golden Mile”, a pub crawl from their hometown that had previously evaded them twenty years ago. Gary needs this reconnection with his old friends for reasons not immediately identified, and this futile and adolescent act is the only way he knows how to recapture the parts of himself that were lost to the relentlessness of time and bad decision making.
Action sequences are played with straight-faced bombastic homage to action and science-fiction films that came before as sloppy drunken punches are filmed with the urgency of a Jason Bourne throwdown and our team attempts to outrun an apocalyptic explosion in a compact car in an unexpected juxtaposition that is as exhilarating as it is hilarious.
The World’s End finally reveals its genre elements as the usual alienation of returning to your hometown after a long absence is taken to its literal extreme. The world had been slowly overtaken by blue-blooded robots and nobody really seemed to notice the transformation. The homogenization of culture brought on by instant worldwide communication happened so slowly that it didn’t evoke suspicion. Our belligerence would be our only saving grace as humanity’s last heroes would drunkenly brawl their way through a veritable ocean of terrifying dopplegangers who are perplexed by the combative nature of a backward species they thought they were trying to help. The cold logic of the invaders’ plan would prove no match for drunken defiance and the boundlessness of human stupidity, so they are forced to pull up their stakes and find a more enlightened species to conquer.
Action sequences are played with straight-faced bombastic homage to action and science-fiction films that came before as sloppy drunken punches are filmed with the urgency of a Jason Bourne throwdown and our team attempts to outrun an apocalyptic explosion in a compact car in an unexpected juxtaposition that is as exhilarating as it is hilarious. The World’s End manages to hit all of the right beats and pays homage and pushes the limits of its genre roots while delivering rapid-fire wit and lamenting the heartbreaking realities of growing old. It is an odd film that juggles these elements with relative ease, delivering another apocalyptic comedy to a culture that has resigned itself to the fact that the world is objectively fucked but it doesn’t mind a good laugh on its way down.
[notification type=”star”]83/100 ~ GREAT. The World’s End manages to hit all of the right beats and pays homage and pushes the limits of its genre roots while delivering rapid-fire wit and lamenting the heartbreaking realities of growing old.[/notification]
