The World's End

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Plot: Gary King (Simon Pegg) gets his old friends together to reenact a bar crawl from their youth. They are old friends who don't see each other much starting a night of drinking. As they go from bar to bar, they find their old town is stranger and stranger. Soon they are being watched, then chased, then worse.  (If you need to know more -- look closely at the movie poster.) At the final bar, called The World's End, the movie reaches its comic, absurdist, sci-fi climax. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The  ramp-up from drinking movie to strange craziness is so perfectly smooth; that is one of the best features.  At the beginning The World's End feels just like a hundred other drunken comedies, and it is funny too, but slowly it takes a right turn into delightful strangeness. Simon Pegg plays a great party animal who is fun and also pitiable. 

The dynamics between the guys is strong through out the movie, and the fact that the characters keep changing just adds to the tension. 

I liked how the names of the bars foreshadow the scene to come. I wondered what the Two Headed Dog was, going to be and it was great. Cool and funny.  The Bee Hive was also clever and cool. 

The soundtrack is very good. I bought four songs. The special effects were initially humorous, but steadily more menacing.  I noticed that several of the actors were amputees, which shows these were old-school, low budget special effects. 

Overall, I loved this movie. Funny. Fun-to-watch. Lots of interesting dialog. 

Cast: Simon Pegg 

Directed by: Edgar Wright

Written by: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg

Rating: 3.5 stars: Loved it. This movie will never stop rotation on late night TV. Not quite weighty enough for 4 stars though. 

 

More: Did you notice the down arrows in the last bar's tap? 

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