The World's End (2013)

I know I discussed The World's End a while back when I was covering Paul, but having spent the weekend at a family wedding, I found myself thinking about weighty matters - things like getting older, and being tolerant, and the bloody-minded determination to recapture one's youth by means of drinking copious amounts of alcohol whilst listening to Come on Eileen.

I'll admit, it wasn't a film I enjoyed at first watch; I actually didn't especially rate it at second or third watch, either. It's the third part of the Cornetto Trilogy, though, and as such, I've been desperate to brainwash myself into loving it. I'm still not quite there, but I think that day's probably getting closer.

Very basically, the film starts out as a high school reunion movie, with former tearaway Gary King (Simon Pegg) trying to reassemble his gang of chums to complete a twelve-pub crawl that they began some twenty years previously but never managed to complete. At nearly forty, however, and with busy lives, his companions Andy Knightley, Peter Page, Oliver Chamberlain and Steven Prince (get the connection?) are less than enthusiastic about the whole business. A little emotional blackmail works wonders, however, and before long they're back in their old hometown of Newton Haven, (played with quiet dignity by the Hertfordshire new towns of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City). As is to be expected, the place has changed a lot. However, the slowly dawning realization that most of the populace has been replaced by blue-bleeding automata definitely comes as something of a shock to the system. Yes, we're back in genre parody territory again, and this time it's the alien invasion paranoia movies that were so popular a handful of years ago.

Make no mistake, there's a lot to like about The World's End. True, it's no Shaun of the Dead, but not many movies are - storytelling that tight and elegant only comes about a few times in a generation. Instead, we get a nicely-acted, nicely shot little character comedy that lays on the sentiment a little heavily but manages to engage nevertheless. The cast doesn't hurt, of course - Pegg surrounds himself with British reliables in the form of Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan and long-term partner in crime Nick Frost, who grounds the film and gives it heart in the same way he always does. As is also traditional, the women are largely present in background roles, although Rosamund Pike is game and rather adorable as the woman Gary and Steven have longed for since the 90s.

Where the film fails, however, is with the bodysnatchers stuff. At around a third of the way in, it's introduced far too late and without the clever foreshadowing that made the first two parts of the trilogy such a delight. Instead, it jars, transforming a sweet and genuinely funny comedy drama into something that borders on being flat-out silly. I find myself wondering what would have happened if there hadn't been the thematic pressure to introduce the genre elements; it's not that I'm condemning horror or cop movies as being for kids, not exactly, but The World's End is all about growing up and accepting adulthood (if not necessarily actually embracing it). I do think that letting it stand as a straight-up dramedy, therefore, would have been a brave choice, and would probably have resulted in a rather better piece of cinema.