The World’s End

Can things ever go back to the way they were? It’s a ques­tion that, for bet­ter and worse, takes on a two-fold mean­ing in Edgar Wright’s lat­est T‑shirt slo­gan-spawn­ing bud­dy caper: first as a direct link to the film’s plot; sec­ond as a veiled state­ment of self-reflexivity.

Where Shaun Of The Dead fol­lowed a group of reg­u­lar beer-swill­ing blokes bat­tling a zom­bie onslaught and Hot Fuzz fea­tured yet more trou­ble-in-the-neigh­bour­hood shenani­gans, so The World’s End pits a group of reg­u­lar beer-swill­ing blokes against a sim­i­lar­ly cat­a­clysmic threat. The hopoca­lypse, if you will.

Five child­hood friends decide to revis­it their for­mer stomp­ing ground for one last crack at the leg­endary ​“Gold­en Mile” pub crawl 20 years after their first and only pre­vi­ous attempt end­ed igno­min­ious­ly, a fail­ure that still haunts self-des­ig­nat­ed ring­leader and per­pet­u­al slack­er Gary King (a show-steal­ing/best-line-hog­ging Simon Pegg). And so he, Andrew (Nick Frost), Steven (Pad­dy Con­si­dine), Oliv­er (Mar­tin Free­man) and Peter (Eddie Marsan) set off on a famil­iar sud-sink­ing adven­ture. Twelve pubs. Twelve pints. What could go wrong?

Upon return­ing to their sleepy home town of New­ton Haven, ​“the five mus­ke­teers” dis­cov­er that, to no one’s sur­prise, noth­ing much has changed since they’ve been away. But when a num­ber of reg­u­lars fail to recog­nise them, the gang quick­ly arrives at the con­clu­sion that all is not groovy.

Being that they’re already beyond the pint of no return, how­ev­er, they decide to see their plan through to the bit­ter end (intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty cred­it: E Wright, S Pegg) – which for Gary means cross­ing off that elu­sive drinker’s dozen while Steven is pre­oc­cu­pied with get­ting reac­quaint­ed with for­mer flame Sam (Rosamund Pike), who hap­pens to be Oliver’s sister.

In many ways The World’s End is Wright’s most sen­ti­men­tal work – in essence a film about lost cama­raderie, mis­spent youth and the crush­ing inevitabil­i­ty of grow­ing up. That’s if you choose to take it at face val­ue. Because despite var­i­ous emo­tion­al beats often (but not always) hit­ting their mark, it’s impos­si­ble to avoid the (know­ing?) irony that Wright has now essen­tial­ly made the same film three times; the first and last arriv­ing close to a decade apart. If this is Wright attempt­ing to reclaim past glo­ries, how­ev­er, the result is only mar­gin­al­ly worse off for it. (NB: The World’s End is loose­ly based on a script Wright wrote when he was 21 enti­tled ​‘Crawl’, which was inspired by his pub crawl attempts as a teenager.)

Of course, the Blood and Ice Cream tril­o­gy was mapped out long before Shaun wield­ed his trusty crick­et bat at our screens. Yet it’s dis­ap­point­ing that the best moments in The World’s End are con­tin­u­a­tions of run­ning gags from the two pre­vi­ous films. It’s anoth­er round of spot the sci-fi movie pastiche/​intertextual ref­er­ence – hur­dled fences, brand­ed frozen desert, etc — that cul­mi­nates in an explo­sive set piece-dri­ven finale stuffed with more East­er eggs than Willy Wonka’s spring basket.

The script­ing is as tight as ever, the hat-tip­ping just as clever, but it’s large­ly fun­ny through famil­iar­i­ty. Yet even though some of the jokes are start­ing to wear a lit­tle thin, it’s tes­ta­ment to the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the series’ cen­tral trio that this third instal­ment ticks so many box­es with­out bring­ing any­thing new to the table.

Like Hot Fuzz before it, The World’s End is under­pinned by the sense that Wright is des­tined for big­ger and bet­ter things. Hav­ing repeat­ed­ly raised the bar for British com­e­dy and now hav­ing seem­ing­ly called time on col­lab­o­rat­ing with his Spaced brethren, the ques­tion is whether Wright can ful­fil the promise of Scott Pil­grim and come up with a new recipe for success.