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Film

The Endless 'World's End'

Simon Pegg's latest could do with more fighting robots, less existential angst.

Dorothy Woodend 31 Aug 2013TheTyee.ca

Dorothy Woodend writes about film every other Friday for The Tyee. Read Woodend's previous reviews.

"Who doesn't love drunk guys fighting robots?"

This summation from the mouth of a 12-year-old boy is essentially everything you need to know about The World's End.

I had such high hopes for The World's End, thinking, finally, this latest romp from Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright would be the antidote to a summer of disappointment. The first two films from the trio (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) easily entered the funny hall of fame, bounding in with puppyish glee and slobbering charm. A larf riot, if you will. The World's End ought to have been a trumpet blast, a fitting toodle-doo to the Cornetto Trilogy.

But things didn't work out that way. The world (and the series) ends with a whimper, and then a bang, and then a bit more whimpering.

A quest for better times

Things get off to an amber-tinged start when a group of lads crown their entrance into adult life with the golden mile, an epic pub crawl in their home town of Newton Haven. Twelve pints in 12 different establishments, culminating in a final quaff in a boozer called the World's End. But their quest ends prematurely, and they stagger off into adulthood. As our narrator, a stringy fellow named Gary King (played by Simon Pegg) intones, "That night was the best night of life."

Jump forward 23 years or so, to current day. The boys have grown to men, and what men they are, robbed of relevance and dull as paper. Peter, Oliver, Steven and Andy, played respectively by Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Nick Frost, try but largely fail to gel as an ensemble. Rosamund Pike, as the sole woman in the film, pops in and out but doesn't have much to do other than function as a peak to be conquered by the boys. The men moan on at each other about jobs, mortgages and nagging wives, all the greyness of middle-class adulthood that makes you want to put a steak knife between your eyes to escape the God-awful thinness of it all.

The reentry of their one-time leader sets things in motion. King Gary, wearing a black trench coat that looks like it was nicked from an orgy at Corey Feldman's house, reunites his old mates and convinces them that they must finish their booze quest. Why, exactly, is left a little unclear, except that poor old Gary doesn't seem to have much else to do. His life hasn't worked out how he planned, and the idea is to start anew with another stab at the alcoholic triple-crown.

The process of getting the boys back together takes up a good first third of the action, by which time you may be experiencing a slow leak of unease in your gut that says, "This is not going to end well."

The inertia cannot be budged, even with constant application of Simon Pegg's straining neck tendons and bulging eyeballs. Pity Pegg, who appears to be experiencing some sort of flop-sweat-meltdown on screen. It is painful to watch such a charming performer slowly dissolve in front of your very eyes, but the show must go on, and on it goes.

Hie thee back to Newton Haven, where Gary and the boys try to pick up where they left off, only to discover that their hometown has suffered a bit of sea change. Something is different. It's not just that every single pub has been given an identical corporate buff and polish, right down to their chalkboard signs, but the people themselves are oddly altered. While in the midst of making the rounds of the golden mile, the boys figure out that they're smack dab in the middle of the world's biggest conspiracy.

Seems like jolly old England, and by extension the rest of the planet, has been infiltrated by a superior alien force that is in the process of ironing out the kinky humans with the careful application of technology. Cell phones, the Internet and social media are there to distract and sedate the human race. Those who will not succumb or be tamed are simply replaced with shiny new replicas.

Only the boy band can save us now, but first they must make it to the World's End, though hell and a whole lot of robots with glowing eyeballs should bar the way.

Off the rails again

Which bring us nicely back to where we started, with drunk guys fighting robots. If the film had stuck to this, it would have been fine, but The World's End can't seem to make up its mind what it wants to be exactly. Is it a paean to the days of beer and roses, a science fiction showdown, or a pithy little statement about the stagnant values of the corporate middle class?

The thing lurches like a drunken bear from scene to scene, looking for the right tone or rhythm to move it into gear. There is a great deal of grinding noises, and a bit of smoke and then it's all over. Is it funny? Is it sad? Or is it just plain silly? Beats the hell out of me, as it is none of those things for more than a few moments at a time.

Just when you think the damn film has finally made up its mind and thrown down a flag right in the middle of science fiction land, things go wildly off the rails, and we're stuck with quivering speeches about the stubborn ass-holiness of the human race.

The story staggers on, adding improbable bits of narrative, more rock-'em-sock-'em robots and a few teary scenes about brotherhood. Pierce Brosnan and the disembodied voice of Bill Nighy show up, and there is certainly a lot of running hither and thither, but for all the fury, fighting, and exploding robots, very little feeling or funniness ensue. The final showdown could have been lifted directly out of an old Star Trek episode, where Kirk yammers on about the pride of human perversity or some such nonsense.

I exited the theatre feeling as if someone, or perhaps something, has fixed my head on backwards and done some untoward probing. In other words, weirdly violated and a bit confused.

What the hell just happened?

One is tempted to demand answers from the universe -- "Why, God, why?"

Sometimes good artists make bad stuff is the most obvious answer. But the film is so ill-timed, so poorly conceived and executed with a strange joylessness, that something else seems to be at work. Perhaps the robots really have taken over and are efficiently and efficaciously going about the process of replacing human beings with facsimiles. It would explain a few things, the existence of Miley Cyrus for one.

The trio of Pegg, Wright and Frost have grown older since the days of Spaced, the television program that first united them. (If you're not familiar with the series, thankfully it is not available on Netflix.) And perhaps it is this alone that is responsible for the weird mixture of flavours that constitutes The World's End. The uneasy combo of pathos and comedy is akin to mixing too many different drinks together. Throw in a lashings of ideas lifted from other films (Invasion of the Body Snatchers to The Stepford Wives), add a dash of apocalypto seasoning, and you get a truly bad batch of stuff.

Last call for the boys of summer?

If the idea was to go against the formula of the previous two films, it simply doesn't work. Nick Frost, whose slovenly ways and wayward teeth brought charm and sweetness to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is consigned to the role of the straight man. While Simon Pegg flails wildly about from sad to silly, never settling in any one spot long enough to actually generate real feeling. Oh boys... one longs for the presence of Jessica Stevenson to add a bit of funny female energy.

Comedy is best when it is lightly offered, a breath and beat. Everyone in this film labours hard for laughs and the strain shows through with a grain of sadness that stains the proceedings. Each of the boys in the gang is provided with a moment or two to remember the promise of their youth and how it simply didn't pan out they way they expected.

Youthful booze-ups turn into addiction. Women leave. Men grow older, but not necessarily wiser. Meanwhile, the plasticity of the modern world wipes away all that is idiosyncratic and individual and replaces it with identical menus. It's all continental cuisine and cell phones. Is this why so many films now end up in the exact same spot, namely the end of the world, or at least one version thereof.

Didn't we start out the summer in a similar place with James Franco and the boys undergoing the end of days in This is the End? The summer months saw Brad Pitt battle bedtime for zombos in World War Z. There were even more robots fighting monsters in Pacific Rim. The cock-up that was Elysium is still lingering like a bad smell in the theatres. What do all of these films have in common? The end of the world is all.

Are we being prepared for something, or simply inured to the inevitable? The notion that humanity is nearing the end of something seems to be everywhere but especially in the movies. What gives? Is it really the end of days, or maybe more correctly the end of men?

It might be last call for the boys of summer, as the long winter of age and irrelevancy looms. You have to feel a little bit sorry for the old buggers. But then again maybe that's exactly what they want: beer and sympathy.  [Tyee]

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