Crammed With Killer Comedy, THE WORLD'S END Is A Funny As Hell Finale To The Cornetto Trilogy

Now playing at a theater near you:

THE WORLD'S END (Dir. Edgar Wright, 2013)

The
third installment in Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy is
finally here and it's fuckin' fantastic!



For those who don't know, the
series, which includes the 2004 zombie rom com SHAWN OF THE DEAD, and
the 2007 action movie satire HOT FUZZ is called such because of a
connection to the Cornetto ice cream brand that appears in each film.



At
first glance, this new entry may look a lot like a British version of
this summer's THIS IS THE END, the raunchy apocalyptic Seth Rogen and
Evan Goldberg comedy.



But here, the cast, made
up of Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Constadine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie
Marsan, aren't playing themselves (that is, exaggerated caricatures of
their personas), and the backdrop isn't that of Biblical rapture; it's
an alien invasion that the blokes uncover while on a pub crawl in their
home town of Newton Haven, England.



Pegg,
as a 40something n'er-do-well alcoholic who never grew up (he still
wears the same Sisters of Mercy t-shirt and black trenchcoat he wore as a
teenager), rounds up his old gang to again attempt the “Gold Mile” crawl
of 12 pubs that they never completed two decades ago.



Pegg's former
pals have all moved on into responsible adulthood and roll their eyes at
the idea, yet they still join in, mainly because Pegg plays the
sympathy card of his mother's recent passing.



Many
pints are consumed by the group, except by the teetotaling Frost who
orders water to Pegg's chagrin (“A man of your legendary prowess
drinking fucking rain! It's like a lion eating Hummus.”), as they make
their way from pub to pub, but they find that Thomas Wolfe was right
about not being able to go home again.



Pub culture has been devoured by
chains making the establishments all look alike, the aging bartenders don't
recognize “the return of the prodigal sons” (as Pegg puts it), and, oh
yeah, it appears that many of the townfolk have been replaced with
robots.



Another
similarity to THIS IS THE END is that THE WORLD'S END (the title comes
from the name of the last pub on the crawl) is crammed with killer
comedy.



Ultra comical fight scenes, rapid fire one-liners, and sight
gags all hit their marks, while the characters' individual dilemmas -
Constadine pines for Freeman's sister Rosamund Pike, Frost reveals his
wife has left him, Marsan deals with running into a former schoolmate
who bullied him, while Pegg is only concerned with partying (no matter
what danger surrounds the fellows, Pegg's always pouring himself another
pint) - don't get short shrift in the mist of all the silly
sci-fi-tinged chaos.



The second in the trilogy, HOT FUZZ, had a juicy extended cameo by former 007 Timothy Dalton, but this tops it by having a better known Bond on hand: Pierce Brosnan as the band of blokes' former professor.



I
love how the film never let ups or drags. Director Wright and lead
protagonist Pegg, who co-wrote the screenplay as they did for SHAWN and
HOT FUZZ, provide an infectious energy, which the rest of the ensemble
is entirely up to the task of. It had everything I wanted from it: tons
of solid laughs, likable relatable characters, and satisfying story
beats all wrapped up together in a package that's as witty as it is
rowdy.



THE
WORLD'S END is a fitting, funny as Hell, end to a what will surely come
to be known as a classic comedy trilogy. A pint and a cone of Cornetto
ice cream would be ideal to consume while viewing it for sure, but the
movie is incredibly filling all by itself.

More later...

ATTACK THE BLOCK: The Film Babble Blog Review

This British sci-fi comedy is playing exclusively in the Triangle at the Colony Theater in Raleigh:



ATTACK THE BLOCK (Dir. Joe Cornish, 2011)

A breath of fresh air after this superhero/sequel saturated summer, "Attack the Block" posits a teenaged South London street gang versus an alien invasion with thrillingly funny results.

There's a bit of a GOONIES filtered through the sensibility of SHAWN OF THE DEAD (Edgar Wright co-executive produced) thing going down as the kids race around a grimy low-income apartment building known as "the Block" (as in Block of flats), battling black furry monsters with green glowing teeth that they call "bear/wolf/gorilla motherfuckers."

The leader of the gang is the unsmiling John Boyega as Moses, who seems destined to the life of a go nowhere drug dealer until this unexpected attack puts him to the test. Boyega's crew is made up of Simon Howard, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, and Leeon Jones.

The underaged hoods first encounter the aliens in the middle of mugging a nurse (Jodie Whittaker) on her way home to the same complex they live in. Whittaker gets away as the gang go after the creature and kill it figuring that it's something they can maybe sell on Ebay.

Moses stashes the dead monster at the apartment of deadly drug kingpin Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter), who has a weed selling underling played by Nick Frost (there's some of that SHAWN OF THE DEAD vibe I was talking about).

Despite their prickly first meeting, Whittaker joins forces with Boyega and his boys (boyz?), while the spot-on Luke Treadaway, as a geeky stoner gang member wannabe, also gets wrapped up into the warfare.

The film builds into a chaotic action-packed blast as the kids pull their resources (mostly fireworks) to battle the bunch of bear/wolf/gorilla motherfuckers (just wanted to type that again), and there are tons of laugh-out loud lines (like "this is too much madness to fit into a text!"), every step of the way.

The movie is a bit too dark - not thematically, but lighting-wise - as some shots are hard to follow through the murky shadows, yet its small scale special effects work well enough to serve the story and tone.

ATTACK THE BLOCK looks destined to be a future cult movie, perfect for late night viewings, but don't wait until then - this is well worth seeking out now while it's still on the big screen.



More later...

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD: The Film Babble Blog Review

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (Dir. Edgar Wright, 2010)



This long awaited adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's graphic novel series opens with a pixelated Universal Studios logo with a symphonic variation on the company's famous theme music. The funny implication is clear - this is a video game cartoon of a movie.



Each character's stats are given in pop-up black boxes, there are subspace doors to alternate dream levels, and when our hero defeats a baddie they explode into a cloud of coins that clank into piles of pocket change on the ground. Our hero, of course, is Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) - an unemployed 23 year old slacker who plays bass in a punk rock band called Sex Bob-Omb.



Cera lives in a shabby apartment in Toronto with his "cool gay roommate" (Kieren Culkin), and he starts off his movie boasting about having a new 17 year old high school girlfriend (Ellen Wong). This budding romance is stunted by the arrival of the girl of Cera's dreams - literally a girl that's been in his dreams - Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers.



The spunky Winstead re-colors her hair every week and works as a delivery person for Amazon so Cera orders something just to be able to ask her out. This is on the side of the woefully oblivious Wong who becomes very upset upon learning of her boyfriend's cheating. This is, the least of Cera's problems as he learns that he has to fight the "League of Evil Exes" for his new girlfriend's hand. That is 7 of Winstead's exes are coming to take him down mostly by way of a big battle of the bands competition. The Evil Exes are (in order of appearance) Satya Bhabha, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Mae Whitman, twins Shota Saito and Keita Saito, with Jason Schwartzman bringing the smarm for the cluttered climax.



Each of the exes has some sort of power which are all fairly well explained (I think), but Cera has mighty powers when he needs them that are not explained. I know, I know - it's just a big surreal world they're having fun with - why ask why? In between the mix of Manga and Martial arts mayhem, director Wright impressively makes the most of the crowded cast that also includes Anna Kendrick as Cera's cynical sister, a very Molly Ringwald circa 1985 looking Alison Pill as Sex Bob-Omb's drummer, and Aubrey Plaza (Parks And Recreation) as a bad tempered co-worker of Kendrick who's foul-mouth makes her a running gag of a character.



But then in this film everybody is a running gag of a character.



The super charged movie has an enjoyable soundtrack provided by Beck who wrote Sex Bob-Omb's material, Nigel Godrich, and Broken Music Scene. It all enhances the playing a video game while blaring punk feeling - or at least the watching somebody playing a game while blaring punk feeling.



Though he is still basically the same old Cera, it must be said that he can be detected trying to play some different notes than he has before with this character. Some of his line readings show a lot more effort than in his last few movies (YOUTH IN REVOLT, YEAR ONE, and PAPER HEART for instance) and he has some tangible chemistry with Winstead.



There's a lot going on (split screen effects, Batman style exclamations like "POW!", frenetic cross cutting, etc.) in every frame of SCOTT PILGRIM and it moves fast through it, but it gets way overloaded in its second half. Not being a gamer or graphic novel enthusiast I'm sure that a lot of stuff flew by me that would give nerdgasms to the audience this is aimed at.



Still I laughed a lot and it doesn't seem out of place with the other wonderful work of Edgar Wright (Spaced, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ) even if it's not quite up to par with those Simon Pegg vehicles.



As I was writing this I saw that surprisingly SCOTT PILGRIM opened at #5 at the box office, beat out by THE EXPENDABLES, EAT PRAY LOVE, THE OTHER GUYS, and INCEPTION.



I guess the geeks aren't going to inherit the earth after all.



More later...