THE WORLD'S END -- (9)

Obviously I enjoyed this film, but I knew I would before I went.  SHAUN OF THE DEAD is the only zombie movie I have ever seen on purpose. (It still gave me nightmares but at least they were funny nightmares.)  HOT FUZZ is quite possibly the greatest movie ever made about excessive police action in small English villages.  So, when THE WORLD'S END opened, I went right out and saw it.   I quite liked it, too.  But I am reluctant to write a review because there are piles of jokes I don't understand. I don't frequent British pubs and have never seen any sort of body-snatcher/pod-people movies which seems to be a lot of what this movie was built on.

But my sister Caroline keeps bugging me to review it so here's what I managed to take away from the film:

Pegg plays a guy named King who, in high school, had an entourage.

The names of these characters, from left to right, are Chamberlain, Prince, King, Knightly, and Page.   They were the royal court of the school, the town, and all of life was in front of them.

Twenty years later, King wants to get everyone together again to do an epic pub crawl that they had failed at once before.

As you can see, everyone has moved on with life - except for King, who is an absolute mess.

This basically sums up his character.

As the movie goes on there is a map,

drinking,

a lot of time spent in bathrooms,

general confusion,

the discovery of a terrifying blue substance,

something called a "marmalade sandwich"

explosions,

and Nick Frost getting to play against type and kick sixteen kinds of booty in a LOT of bar fights.

"I've got my pink shirt and five shots of tequila - LET THE BEATINGS COMMENCE!!"

And if that's not awesome enough for you, there is (as one can expect from these lads) a lot of stuff about growing up and friendship and taking risks, free will and accepting the imperfections in yourself and others.

So, basically, it's less scary than SHAUN OF THE DEAD, has fewer potty-mouthed priests than HOT FUZZ, and manages to bring a lot of humanity (and a twist!) to the pod-people genre.