The World's End (and Movie Musings: Three Flavours Cornetto)

And so it comes to this, the final installment in Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. This being so, and having seen the film tonight, I am in a mood to muse on the trilogy before I go to bed.

As an aside, the cinema was struck by lightning halfway through the film and had to reboot which, in the end, turned out to be kind of apt.

The trilogy began almost a decade ago, with 2004's Shaun of the Dead. Self-described as 'a romantic comedy with zombies', it was on one level a fairly crude slacker comedy, but also contained elements of broad social satire, comparing the soporific and repetitive nature of modern society with the Hollywood Zombie movie. It was also - in common with all of the trilogy - about the need to grow up, without losing touch with your past and your sense of fun. Pegg's Shaun is the middle ground between absolute slacker Ed (Frost) and uptight ex-bro Pete (Peter Serafinowicz); young enough to still be alive and motivated enough (just) to move on when necessary.

The second film was Hot Fuzz, in 2007, a buddy cop movie set in a small English village, which transforms half way through into a madcap Hollywood action flick. Like Shaun, it combined a mundane setting with its more fantastical elements. It equated normalcy and conformity with a more sinister kind of control, this time in the form of the village-wide murderous conspiracy, rather than the more impersonal zombie plague.

Hot Fuzz also celebrated friendship and a kind of overgrown boyishness, although this time Pegg's character was the straight-laced Nick Angel, a tightly controlled police sergeant who needs to loosen up, while Frost plays the childlike, innocent Danny, who needs to grow up. The themes are similar, but the balance and execution are very different. As an aside it was also the only one of the three films that had no love interest in (although it did toy with some macho homoeroticism, it really only toyed).

And that brings us to the darkest installment of the trilogy - the mint choc-chip - 2013's The World's End, and the part of this review which has a few spoilers in it.

Pegg plays Gary King, an unreconstructed man-child whose life never lived up to the promise of his youth, and who is determined to recapture his glory by reuniting his childhood friends in an attempt to finally complete the Golden Mile, a twelve-stop pub crawl around their home village, the first attempt at which (ending on nine) was the high point of his life. Once more, Frost's Andy is the sidekick, but this time he gets to play the straight man; Andy is the one sobered by age and regrets, married with two children and impatient of Gary's excesses and refusal to face his shortcomings.

This time also they are joined by others who have a more even share of the limelight than has previously been the case: Ollie (Martin Freeman), Pete (Eddie Marsan) and especially Steven (Paddy Considine) round out the Five Musketeers (better than three, because you can lose two and still have three), while Sam (Rosamund Pike) is Ollie's sister and the great regret of at least one of the others.

And you know what? That would have been a great film.

Pegg, traditionally playing the sympathetic character, is a revelation as Gary, a narcissistic jerk (and yet still manages to pull it back at the end), and the balance of the other characters is just right to have been a superior finally-coming-of-age rom com. But then it goes all Hollywood again, as the six friends accidentally uncover an alien invasion of an unusually benign character; in fact, an invasion right in line with the intentions of the Neighbourhood Watch in Hot Fuzz, who have made use of technology to affect a similar soporific effect as seen in Shaun of the Dead.

In fact, given that it shares no characters or settings with the other films, it wraps up the trilogy to impressive effect, with a fair few callbacks and the usual array of quirky little echoes throughout. Pike's Sam is also perhaps the trilogy's strongest female character, although admittedly that's not saying a great deal. It is a fair criticism to say that all three films are pretty laddish, and although somewhat self-consciously so, it is pervasive enough to be a barrier to enjoyment for some (although not enough to be so for me).

I enjoyed the film a great deal; although I am clearly in the target audience (nerds of a certain age). It's a likeable film, if a little rough around the edges (and not one for anyone who doesn't like the swears).