Arts & Entertainment

Does 'The World's End' Work? Check Online Reviews

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Compiled by Rebecca McCarthy

The premise:

Remember the "Shaun of the Dead," the send-up of zombie movies by British director Edgar Wright? He's finished another hilarious movie, this one a riff on the "you can't go home" buddy theme combined with an alien invasion. Simon Pegg (Gary), the coolest kid in a village high school, assembles his four buddies for a return to their hometown to complete a pub crawl. Things do not go as planned. The cast includes Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, David Bradley.

What critics are saying:

But Simon Pegg in "The World's End," the latest work of brilliant inanity from director Edgar Wright, takes this whole reluctant-savior-of-humanity thing to a new plane. Twenty years after high school, Pegg's scruffy, unshaven, never-gonna-grow-up, substance-abusing Gary can't hold down a job. His idea of a relationship is a quick tryst in the loo of a pub. This is a guy who's gonna save us — or at least, parts of suburban England — from an alien invasion? Lord help us.
JOCELYN NOVECK , Associated Press

Five former high school chums have grudgingly reunited after their self-styled leader, Gary King (Pegg), persuades them to reattempt a pub crawl they had tried and failed to complete while in their teens. Busy as they are mulling over their various midlife crises, it takes a while to figure out that something is amiss in their former hometown. Their former crushes and bullies are, suspiciously, all too willing to make their acquaintance, and, before long the entire hamlet—men and women with blue light emanating from their eyes and mouths—is hunting them down. Drew Grant, New York Observer

It's all well and good to tell stories of middle-aged men reckoning with both their lost youth and their impending mortality. But The World's End is perhaps more touching for what it says about the changed landscape ofEngland. The soundtrack here is marvelous, a mix of '90s numbers from the likes of the Stone Roses, Suede, and Primal Scream. But in its most elegiac moments, The World's End conjures a much older song that Wright doesn't include here (though he featured it in Hot Fuzz): What this village of McPubs needs is a little of the Kinks' "Village Green Preservation Society." Everybody confronts his or her lost youth. But when your favorite pub starts offering a vegan menu, it really does seem like the end of the world. Stephanie Zacharekthe Village Voice

Nostalgia has a distinctly bitter aftertaste in the apocalyptic pub crawl "The World's End." Dozens of foamy pints are pulled in Edgar Wright's gleefully demented sci-fi buddy picture, a giddy capper to the beloved Cornetto trilogy that includes the zombie rom-com "Shaun of the Dead" and the action parody "Hot Fuzz." Of course, there is still nothing nearly as intoxicating as watching Simon Pegg and Nick Frost muck about for a few hours. Karen D'Souza, San Jose Mercury News

"The World's End" runs 109 minutes and is rated R for pervasive language, including sexual references.


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