For those who don’t know, The World’s End is the third film in Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost’s self-titled “Cornetto Trilogy.” It rounds off what was started with Shaun of the Dead and carried forward into Hot Fuzz.
The World’s End tells the tale of Gary King (Simon Pegg), who convinces his high school mates to reluctantly take up the challenge of “The Golden Mile.” It’s a pub crawl: 12 pints, 12 pubs, no compromises. Their last big hurrah of high school was to attempt this but never finished it. For Gary, not finishing might have been one of the biggest tragedies of his life.
I don’t want to say much more about the story of the film than that, to be honest. And I’d suggest you stay away from the trailers if you haven’t already seen them.
Just go see this movie.
Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have once again crafted a screenplay here that is a finely tuned Swiss watch. No one writes screenplays this carefully or deliberately in Hollywood these days. Every set up has a payoff, every moment of the film is carefully charted for maximum comedic effect, and every beat and turn in the story is at once natural, but absurd in a believable way.
It’s remarkable how far this film descends into the absurd, but the writing, directing, and acting is all so good that it never feels as though you’ve lost your grounding or your grip on reality. This is a perfect example of a film that I wish existed in a time where you didn’t need trailers and you didn’t need to give away where the film is going in those trailers. I’d love to see this play out for a person who has no idea what might be coming.
This film is a master class in story structure. Nothing is wasted and every moment is efficient and effective. Each moment in the film propels us to the next effortlessly and reasonably, no matter how absurd the story gets, the next step makes sense.
I know “efficient” and “effective” aren’t words one is looking to hear in a film review, but those are qualities I admire in storytelling. They’re taking ambitious risks and have done all the work to make them come off flawlessly.
Edgar Wright is the sort of filmmaker I hope to be and movies as finely tuned as this make me realize how far I have to go.
It’s important to highlight the cast of this film as well. Simon Pegg takes risks as the unlikable and pathetic Gary King, trapped in his 1990 high school life. Nick Frost gets outside of his normal sphere as well, playing a responsible family man who just wants to get past the sort of life Gary represents. The rest of their gang, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, and Eddie Marsan, are nothing short of brilliant in their character portrayals and comedic timing.
I was also happy to see another James Bond alum in a Cornetto trilogy film. In Hot Fuzz, underrated Bond Timothy Dalton is one of the funniest parts of the film. In The World’s End, former Bond Pierce Brosnan plays the Rope-like Jimmy Stewart professor to Simon Pegg’s student.
I want to see what they’d do with George Lazenby.
While I’d need to see this film again to truly comment on the quantity and quality of the laughs compared to the other films in the Cornetto trilogy, it’s safe to say that this film is in the same league as the first two films. I had a smile on my face the whole time and not a minute went by when I wasn’t laughing. If you enjoyed those, you’re going to enjoy this.
If you didn’t enjoy those films, I’m not even sure why we’re talking.
If you did enjoy all those films, then check back to Big Shiny Robot! over the coming weeks to check out interviews I did at San Diego Comic-Con with Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost.