Review of The World's End (2013) by Robert H — 14 Aug 2014

THE WORLD'S END is the final entry in Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy, and it has the same elements which made the previous two enjoyable: sharp dialogue and chemistry among the leads, a sense of fun, a good soundtrack and Edgar Wright's flashy directing style.

However, the results this time are a bit more of a mixed bag. The story this time is about Gary King (Simon Pegg), who gathers his childhood friends together to finish an epic pub crawl that they failed to complete over 20 years before.

Starting off with the positives, the chemistry between the actors is as strong as ever and the trademark British humor is in full force. Simon Pegg clearly had a fun time making this film, and it shows in his performance.

There were also some nice twists and turns in the story, although where the story ends up going takes everything off the rails. While the previous two films worked primarily as parody/homage, this one takes it a step further and actually tries to shoehorn a message about letting go of your past and growing up.

The others were meta in the way they dealt with their respective genre cliches, but this one felt meta in the sense that the group of people making it were making some sort of statement about their professional lives, at least as far as their collaborations go.

Basically, it was their way of letting go of the past and moving forward. This is an admirable sentiment, but it also didn't make for the funniest film at times. There was also some issues with character development.

Each character had a few different qualities which distinguished themselves from the others (and were different from previous characters they played), but most of the development came from exposition which I felt was rather weak.

Finally, the biggest single problem with the film (as with the last one, only worse) was the ending. Here also, it felt like they could have ended the film at a couple of places, but for some reason it just kept going, as if they didn't really know how they wanted to end it.

So as not to spoil any surprises, I will stop there. Suffice it to say that a good 10 minutes could have been trimmed to make a more streamlined film. Still, as a collaboration between a solid comic team and an excellent director, I enjoyed it.

It doesn't quite stand up to the previous two, but those set an impossibly high bar anyway. Overall, if you enjoyed the first two you should definitely check this out. You might not be as impressed, but it's still like having some laughs with old friends.