From the creators of the famed British movies “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” comes their new sci-fi comedy, “The World’s End.”
As usual, co-writer Simon Pegg stars in the film in which he plays an eternally immature, drunk middle aged man named Gary King from a small English suburb called Newton Haven.
The film actually starts 20 years in the past when Gary and his four buddies decide to take on their town’s famous pub crawl called “The Golden Mile” which consists of twelve pubs in which they must have at least one drink at every bar (actually it seemed very closely similar to our own Cotati Crawl just a lot more intense).
Failing to ever reach the final pub called The World’s End due to several of the friends passing out and getting sick, King remains stuck in an everlasting dream to finally one day reach the World’s End at the final stop on the Golden Mile.
Twenty years later and we find King unchanged in a therapy group circle reminiscing about that famed night in which he almost completed the Golden Mile.
It dawns on him that he needs to complete his goal of finishing the pub crawl so he goes out in search of his long lost buddies who we eventually see are all white collar businessmen leading mundane yet consistent lives.
Typically most of his old friends see him as pathetic for even trying to ask them to return to Newton Haven yet with some convincing and a morbidly funny lie that his mother has died, King gets all of his friends to return with him back to their old home.
When the five friends return the town seems to be untouched and exactly how they left it.
As they enter the first bar on the Golden Mile, The First Poet, King is sad to realize that he is not getting the recognition or the praise that he feels he so deserves nor are his friends really getting into the spirit of things, as one of his friends Andy just orders a water at every pub.
At around the fourth pub King goes off to the toilet where he begins talking to a teenage boy using the urinal about how much of a big shot he was around the Golden Mile, to which the boy bluntly warns King not to bother him.
The movie finally throws the audience for a curve ball when King and the young teen begin brawling in the bathroom after King ignores the teen’s warning.
The teen has abnormal strength however and King ends up beheading the boy on the end of the sink.
What I wasn’t prepared for was that when the boy is beheaded instead of gore and blood, it is rather blue like ink that pours out of the neck and the body continues to move with the head detached.
It was then that I realized that I wasn’t watching a typical end of the world zombie movie but rather a science fiction robot movie which I definitely wasn’t expecting but at the same time was something new and refreshing.
After the incident in the pub bathroom the rest of the movie beings to get creepier and creepier as we discover the town has been taken over by basically these alien robots who want to make the human race (and all races actually) into these perfect clone like beings, almost reminding me of “The Stepford Wives” or a good episode of the “Twilight Zone.”
Without giving away the rest of the movie, be prepared for an unexpected finish.
For me, “The World’s End” was not my favorite when compared to “Hot Fuzz” and “Shaun of the Dead,” however it still was worth seeing on the big screen.
I love a good British comedy and this one does not fail to disappoint when it comes to clever humor and good acting. The whole robot theme did seem a bit cheesy at points but that really is the whole point of these spoof-life movies which makes it completely acceptable in this case.
I would definitely recommend seeing “The World’s End” but I must warn you that you will crave an enormous amount of beer after the movie is over.