The World's End (2013)

Rating: 5/5

Everybody loves Pegg and Frost, don't they? I'd say 99% of the people I know think of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead to be among the finest movies to come out of Britain in recent years, and among the best comedies around. They do it so well - they do the 'buddy love' minus the Americanised schmaltz, and get us laughing in a relatable way. Consider, for example, one of Pegg's friends revealing how he defaced some graffiti by scratching the R out of 'King Gary.' Ha! If that doesn't take you back to your school days, nothing will!

Simon Pegg stars as said King, who was the god of his high school back in '90..."you know, 1990?" A bemused kid stares dumbfounded. On the last day of school, Gary and his four best buddies went on the traditional pub crawl of their town, known as the Golden Mile, in which they were each to drink a pint from twelve different pubs, culminating at The World's End. Back then, they didn't make it past the ninth pub.

Years later, Gary is (I presumed) an alcoholic on the run from some kind of institution, and determined to complete the Golden Mile with his friends. They've done the growing up thing; they've got jobs, wives, kids and houses. All Gary has is his knackered out '80s car 'The Beast,' a Sid Vicious wardrobe and some undetermined source of income substantial enough to purchase a LOT of booze. Through his hilarious, teenage-like antics and 'white lies' about his mother dying, he guilt trips and persuades his boys to come back to their home town and finish what they started "to the bitter end...or lager end."

Pegg takes things to a whole new level with this role. We've seen the reserved, straight-faced characters, and now he goes crazy British-Jack Black on us. He is one of those guys who manages to make a loud, obnoxious man funny rather than irritating. On the flip side, Nick Frost now plays the most mature of the friends, who is a big businessman, and acts like the uptight teacher on the school trip. It's impressive how suddenly depressing his early pessimism is to us as an audience, as well as to his companions. But in usual form, the grumpy guy makes a turnabout, to deliver just as much physical humour in the final act as his goofy costar.

We've seen zombies, we've seen a murderous cult of pensioners, and now we get robots. But do you know what 'robot' means? It's from the Czech for 'slave,' as is repeatedly pointed out, and these beings, apparently, are not slaves. The sci-fi second half is a brilliant play on everybody's adult realisation of how their hometowns have changed. How the people forget you and seem different, and how there's some unidentifiable, intangible metamorphosis on the places we once saw as home. I really, really liked this theme. It was explored so well, that you don't have to be of Pegg and Frost's generation to understand. You just have to have left school, I guess, and come to the same reluctant conclusions that they have. If you haven't left school, you should see it as a friendly warning to make the most of everything!

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost make such great movies, and this is the cherry on top of a fantastic trilogy. Things are wrapped up in perfect style, as always, with a monumental smashdown in a pub (where else?!), and even a sneaky Mint Cornetto reference. They bring together a few of the usual suspects like Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Bill Nighy, and throw in a surprise appearance by Pierce Brosnan.

Anybody can enjoy The World's End, I'm sure. It is very funny, very relatable, and an awesome end to the Cornetto Trilogy.