The World’s End review by David Griffin
September 1, 2013 3:25 pm | Leave your thoughts
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Spoiler alert: I will be ruining the events of this movie. As much as it pains me to do so, deadlines are a bitch.
Imagine playing a video game with Samus riding a Chocobo throwing Bob-ombs at Daleks in Hyrule. This would be almost as good as the perfect storm that is The World’s End. I do realize that I, as a thirty five year old man, am the exact target market for this film that makes its playground the science fiction genre; but, if you were a fan of the previous two films of the Cornetto trilogy, you owe it to yourself to go see The World’s End.
Director Edgar Wright weaves the tales of five friends attempting to recreate their pub crawl from twenty years ago of The Golden Mile, twelve pubs along a single stretch of road in their hometown. Gary, played by Simon Pegg, is determined to complete this unfinished quest from their adolescence because that night was the greatest moment of his life. When we are introduced to Gary, he is sitting in a group therapy circle for addicts. Pegg’s Gary has almost no redeeming qualities. He is suffocated by nostalgia. He drives the same car he drove twenty years ago. He even has the same mix tape that his best friend Andy, the delightful Nick Frost, made him back in high school playing in the tape deck. Gary is willing to do whatever it takes to finish the Golden Mile whether that means the destruction of his friends or even the entire human race. Pegg shows tremendous range that I have never seen from him playing a character that is the protagonist of the film but in no way the hero.
When the boys return to their hometown, Gary is put off by the fact that none of the townies seem to remember them or anything about that epic night twenty years ago. He is further angered by his former best friend Andy’s refusal to drink with them, describing Andy drinking water “like watching a lion eat a plate of hummus.” By the fourth bar, the group has had enough of Gary’s bullshit and is ready to call it a night. Gary has an altercation with one of the bar’s other patrons that includes him performing a “Rock Bottom” during the fight. Both of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s signature finishing moves are featured in the film so I can only guess they want to do a movie with him in the future.
From this point forward, The World’s End never slows down. It establishes a frenetic pace that is rarely pulled off successfully in the comedic genre. I give The World’s End an enthusiastic Tupperware rating. It hit on every beat and finished with a bang, a very big bang, delivering on the promise made in the title. The movie was a series of circles. Pegg’s Gary begins the movie in a circle and ends in a circle. I got thinking about how your past can help you move forward but only if you learn lessons from it. If you just glorify it and do not see it for what it was, you will only be trapped, unable to move forward. I once had a close friend, a best friend, who I lost solely based on dumb fuck choices we both made. We became better people in our time apart, and now we are creating something new. When we were young, we agreed on everything. Now that we are older and hopefully wiser, we often disagree on things, but we respect the other’s point of view. Just like in The World’s End when Andy does his best to bring Gary back from the brink, Brian Frederick has helped get me through these last two months in ways that he doesn’t even understand, and I want everyone out there to know how thankful I am for him. Gary never let his friends know how important they are to him. I was disturbed by how much I identified with the protagonist of this film. It is truly rare that watching a movie actually makes you a better person. This movie might not be the epiphany for you that it was for me, but it’s the best bang for your buck you can get in theaters right now.
Special thanks to Carmike Cinemas at Grand Prairie (formerly The Rave) for being the best theater in Peoria, Illinois!
Review by David Griffin
email: domesticateddave@gmail.com
Tags: Cornetto Trilogy, Edgar Wright, NIck Frost, Simon Peg, The World's End
Categorised in: Movie Reviews, Random Reviews & News
This post was written by David Griffin
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