The World's End // Review

2004’s Shaun of the Dead showed us how to deal with a zombie apocalypse from the safety of the pub, and in 2007 Pegg and Frost, the post-modern heroes of our time, tooled up again and took on the town committee from hell in true buddy-cop style in action comedy Hot Fuzz. Now they return in The World’s End, the third instalment of Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours/Blood and Ice Cream trilogy. This time the boys (rather metaphorically) are on a quest to finish what they started twenty years ago as Gary (Simon Pegg) reorganises the legendary pub-crawl that the boys failed to complete 20 years ago. They soon run into trouble as they stumble across an alien invasion, ex-girlfriends and the price of drinking in twenty pubs in the modern economy. Thus sparking the most bizarre pub brawl ever seen and laughs aplenty. I have no doubt that this film will be good, but will it be as good as the others? What has changed within the camp is that Pegg, who has previously played the hero of the piece leaving Frost in the role of loveable sidekick, is the butt of a lot of the jokes as he plays Gary King - a 40-year old struggling to recapture his fading youth in the face of his friends’ successful transition into adult lives. Perhaps this is the message for the audience after all? Have the team seen their once clever and referential style now grown out of control and dated, and are seeking to teach us that we should beware our heroes lest they lead us away from the path of biting zeitgeist humour? Nah, I reckon they just thought it was time that the fat one had a go. Enjoy. Smiley