Tag Archives: The World’s End (2013)

The World’s End (2013) a (mildly) belated review

Movie “coincidences” are a curious thing.  I’m referring here to the times when very similarly themed movies are released at roughly the same time.

Sometimes such coincidences are anything but.  A long while back, after the tremendous success of both The Terminator and Aliens, it was announced that director James Cameron’s next project was to be set in an underwater facility.  Rival movie studios, hoping to steal Mr. Cameron’s lightning (and box office gold), set about making their own films set in underwater facilities.  Thus it was that in the year 1989 Mr. Cameron’s The Abyss was released at roughly the same time as both Leviathan and DeepStar Six.  The Abyss would turn out to be completely unlike Mr. Cameron’s previous white knuckle thrillers but Leviathan and DeepStar Six were essentially what the studios thought Mr. Cameron was up to: A variation of Alien/Aliens set in an underwater facility.

While this was a case where the studios were emulating (or, to not be quite so polite: ripping off) each other, there have been other occasions where “coincidental creativity” has appeared.  One has to look no further than the 2013 release of the comedies The World’s End and the somewhat similarly themed (and very similarly titled) This is the End.

This is the End (you can read my full review here) was a film featuring comedy actors playing exaggerated/cartoon versions of themselves while the Biblical Apocalypse rains down on Earth.  For better or worse, much of the humor felt improvised and the plot was rather simple.  On the other hand, The World’s End feels like a more thoroughly thought out story which is just as likely to be bittersweet as it is humorous.

The World’s End, for those who don’t know, is the third of the so-called “Cornetto Trilogy”.  The other two films in the trilogy, all of which feature director/co-writer Edgar Wright and stars/co-writers Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, were the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead and the “Dirty Harry” meets Agatha Christie comedy Hot Fuzz.

Thus, the two previous Cornetto films take on popular movie genres and create their own humorous riff on them.  So, for The World’s End, what movie/genre did the trio decide to focus on?

Try Invasion of the Body Snatchers married with Peter Pan and a hint of The Big Chill.

The story goes like this: Back in the 1990’s a group of High School friends got together for one big -and they thought last- night of debauchery before graduating and heading off to “real” life.  They intended to visit (and drink at!) the twelve bars in the small town they all lived in, progressively getting wasted in “epic” fashion.

However, they didn’t quite make it to the last of the twelve bars, the titular The World’s End, so their epic journey ended in failure.

In the present, this group of friends have grown and have careers and family.  But their one-time leader, Gary King (Simon Pegg), appears to have never grown up.  When first seen, we find he’s in some kind of group therapy and talks about that magical night twenty some odd years before and laments that the group never quite finished their adventure.  One of his fellow therapy partners asks if he thinks about doing this again, to finish what he started, and so begins the adventure…

In the course of the next few minutes of screen time, we’re introduced to the now-aging gang via Gary.  He meets up with each of them individually and does what he can (usually involving sweet talk and/or white lies and flim-flammery) to convince them to go back to their home town and finish their bar hopping adventure.  In the end, Gary succeeds in getting everyone together and they start their day of bar hopping…

…until things get decidedly strange.

As I noted above, this film owes its central plot to Invasion of the Body Snatchers just as previous Cornetto films owed their plots to other films/genres.  It is this element which becomes the movie’s main focus, though there are other additions to the mix.

The comic elements are fun, though the film is just as often rather sad.  The fact of the matter is that Gary is, for the most part, a pathetic figure.  He is a warning to everyone of the dangers of living in the past and refusing to accept one’s present.  Indeed, as the movie progresses, his friends are more and more turned off by him and are about to leave him to his windmills and return to their adult lives when the strange stuff begins.

Given how “normal” the first third or so of the film was, the arrival of the strange stuff creates a rather jarring turn, and I suspect the film would have been a little better if they made the transition more subtly than they did here.

Still, this was their choice and the final parts of the film involve the characters still navigating their way through the bars while dealing with, potentially, the end of the world.

The World’s End is an amusing enough film that entertained me through its runtime without necessarily knocking my socks off.  While it didn’t wear out its welcome like This Is The End, the mix and mash use of different genres didn’t work quite as well here as they did in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, at least for me.

Regardless, the film was far more enjoyable -again, to me- than the somewhat similar Seth Rogan vehicle.  If you’re already a fan of the Cornetto films, this is a no-brainer.  Others not quite as familiar with the Wright/Pegg/Frost collaborations may take a little more time to warm up to their particular brand of humor.