British invasion

Director Edgar Wright teams with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost for the raucous conclusion to their “Cornetto” trilogy with The World’s End, a twisted homage to male bonding, beer crawls and John Carpenter sci-fi.

What makes this movie so much fun is that sense that anything can, and will, happen. Pegg plays Gary King, a relatively troubled but good-natured man determined to get his old crew back together and complete a pub crawl in his English hometown. This gathering would take place 20 years after the gang had failed to make it to the last pub on the infamous crawl, an incident providing King with a nagging sense of unfinished business.

A good chunk of the film is actually a warm hearted, funny and well written gathering of old friends, told in straightforward fashion. Some of the men from the old gang are fairly happy to see King, while others, like the still recovering Andy (Nick Frost) would prefer he piss off. Still, even the apprehensive Andy joins the crew for what looks to be a taxing crawl drinking 12 pints in 12 clubs.

If The World’s End just stayed the course and was a story about arrested adolescence, the dangers of going “back,” and the perils of drinking too much, it would be a pretty great movie. Pegg and Frost actually display solid dramatic chops to go with their comedic instincts.

Thankfully, Wright and Pegg (both responsible for the screenplay) have more, much more, in mind. The film takes a crazy turn in a manner akin to the big twist in From Dusk Till Dawn, and suddenly becomes an alien invasion movie. This is prominently mentioned in the film’s ad campaign, so I hope I didn’t ruin your day.

It turns out their hometown has become overrun with blue-blooded robots from another world, robots that are determined to replicate Earthlings and dispose of their bodies (shades of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Carpenter’s The Thing). This sets the stage for awesome man-on-robot fight scenes. With this film, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Wright has proven himself a modern master of cinematic hand-to-hand combat. The choreography is hilarious and nasty.

On top of everything, the film works as a scathing satire of the infiltration of technology in our society, and how those damned iPads and smart phones are taking over. Please don’t count my saying this as any indication that I am against advancing technology. I love my gadgets, even if they are swallowing my soul. They’re just so damned cool to play with!

In addition to Pegg and Frost, the cast includes Rosamund Pike as Sam, doing a fine job of kicking ass and looking flabbergasted. Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins!) reminds that he is a master comedic actor as an uptight real estate agent who never, ever removes his earphone, even when he’s pub-crawling. Eddie Marsan breaks hearts as Peter, a once-bullied man who is actually distraught when his former bully (Darren Boyd) fails to recognize him.

If one were to rank this one in the Cornetto trilogy (named for a brand of ice cream that appears in all three films), this one is just a notch below Shaun of the Dead, yet a little better than Hot Fuzz. All three are solid, funny, smart films that make me wish they were part of a 10 movie series.

Many of the summer blockbusters have been big, bloated messes that delivered messy action with little to no thrills. The World’s End makes up for a lot of the summer garbage with its big heart, many laughs and eye-popping visuals. Wright and Pegg remain supremely sick in the head, and we moviegoers benefit from their particular brand of insanity.