Pub crawl of the apocalypse

In World's End, Gary King (Simon Pegg), who is either the real loser of the group or its only free spirit (an ambiguity that works quite well in the early stages), gathers his four forty-something best mates of decades earlier to restage and this time conclude an epic pub crawl, set in Newton Haven, the irritatingly bland semi-suburban "garden city" location of their youth -- that they did not mange to finish back then. Twelve public houses are included, ending at the eponymously named one, a pint to be drunk by each of the companions at every stop along the way. Though all of Gary's friends, who have not seen him in a while, and one of whom is presently a long-time teetotaler, have become thoroughly serious and respectable, their resistance to the regressive exploit he proposes is surprisingly weak, and they assemble for the pub crawl, with a map.

The evening (which begins too early, daylight showing up the drab boredom of the cookie-cutter town) might in other hands conceivably have been an exploration of lives and relationships like Graham Swift's Last Orders, the story of a group of old friends taking a loved one's ashes to the sea, which was made into a very nice little film in 2001 by Fred Schepisi. But of course that's not what Wright & Co. have in mind. Their purpose, as in previous outings, is satire and a play with genre, this time science fiction, which is also, like Shaun of the Dead, a mockery of the limitations of contemporary English life. This time it's not zombies who're taking over, but robots, or automatons. These appear first in the form of some young toughs who confront Gary in a loo. They turn out to be brittle, and prone to losing a limb or a head, and they spurt bright blue blood when broken open.

Need we note that robots are not as cuddly and creepily human-like as zombies? The comparison between the creatures taking over the town and the normal folk who predominated beforehand therefore comes off as less droll and ironic and more heavy-handed. The way it's all played out never seems much more than funny-peculiar. Wright and his collaborator on scripts, Pegg, do decent dialogue, and the movie feels well made. There's something energetic and firm in the sequences of scenes. But where's the fun? Why are there so few laughs? I heard them, but they came from the loyal audience, who came for hilarity and insisted on finding it, but it wasn't so much in evidence on screen.

So if I had to explain in a few words why I was disappointed by The World's End, I'd say because it just isn't all that funny. Wright and his cohorts Simon Pegg and Nick Frost thoroughly won me over (along with plenty of other people) in 2004 with the hilarious central premise of his first hit feature, Shaun of the Dead. This was that England could be taken over by zombies and due to the normal taciturnity of the British nature nobody would quite notice. The drollery with which this theme was worked out compensated for a degree of excess in the picture's violent finale. I have to admit I have been somewhat disappointed ever since. Why did I not like the next one, Hot Fuzz (2007), a satire on cop movies, as much? Again the answer is quite simple. Things seemed fast, loud, and out of control from the start. I won't go into Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010). A certain substantial segment of the public loves it, and it seems to know what it's doing, even if I didn't quite; it was the moment when I began to fall out of love with Michael Cera. But Cera's twee having run out, he seems to be making a successful comeback as a very unpleasant person in The End of the World -- not to be confused with Wright's more modest English effort -- and his little psychedelic romp in Latin America, Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus. Maybe Wright, Pegg, et al. need similar transformation.

The World's End, 109 mins., opened in the UK 19 July 2013; its US release date was 23 August.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.