Review: ‘The World’s End’

Here is “The World’s End” – from the writers, director and stars of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” comes a movie about a group of friends reuniting to recreate a pub crawl 20 years after their failed first attempt, and during this pub crawl they work out a number of issues among themselves while also coming to the realization that their old hometown seems to have been taken over all “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” style.

“The World’s End” may be about a group of friends, but really its about two of the guys, ringleader Gary King (Simon Pegg) and Andy Knightley (Nick Frost), and even then, it’s really just about Gary King, BUT REALLY in the end when it’s all said and done this movie is actually about all of us. So the movie starts with a retelling of a pub crawl attempt by five teenagers in a small UK village, with the goal being to down a pint at 12 different pubs over the course of a night. This first attempt is a failure.

Jump to 20 years later and Gary King wants to get the gang back together to give it one more go. See, Gary King is stuck in the past, thinking he had it in when he was a rascal teenager and being supremely disappointed with this current adult life. So what better way to make himself feel better than to recreate the greatest night of his life? He manages to convince his friends to tag along, though for the most part they all seem adequately happy with their own lives, and they are all off to the small town they grew up in together. But the town isn’t exactly as they remember it, nor are the people living there, and it’s only a matter of time before they find out that there is some crazy pod people, body snatching, sci-fi type of shit going down in this town. Meanwhile, Gary has to sort out his whole sucking at life and wishing he was still a teenager thing, which also includes having to settle some important debts with people important to him.

“The World’s End” actually has a few things going for it. There’s the dramatic crux of the story, which is Gary King’s crippling nostalgia, which causes him to live in the past and not embrace the present or look forward to the future. Not a good way to live, yet it seems like more and more people are falling prey to their nostalgic whims these days.

Then there is the whole invasion/people swapping/enslavement/robot angle which is tied into a larger theme about the homogenization of culture, specifically in UK pubs in this movie, but this is obviously happening everywhere around the world. There is a moment in the movie in which the guys transfer over from one pub to another and the pubs are practically identical, and if I remember correctly they even call this “Starbucksing” in the movie, as the pubs are made up to look like Starbucks-style corporate-ready taverns, and also the fact that Starbucks has been vilified for crushing small coffee shops while manufacturing their own coffee shop culture on a first national and then a global scale. What does the movie have to say about this phenomenon of corporations shaping our culture and attempting to dictate our wants and desires?

Well, this is actually kind of tied directly into the ending, along with the townspeople being taken over by “robots,” and to what purpose I will not divulge here, but suffice to say, they make a big deal about the robots not liking the word robot because it means slave, and it’s like a consumer being reminded that he or she is nothing but a consumer in the eyes of the almighty corporate gods, they say to that, “no! I am a human who makes choices and I CHOOSE to enjoy these products and services.” Imagine if Roddy Piper put on those sunglasses in “They Live,” saw all the aliens and their alien propaganda to enslave humans, and he just ripped off those glasses and threw them down and said, “no! I am not being enslaved by an alien race!” You know, the ole stick your head in the sand technique. Is that we were are all doing? And is that an odd statement to make from the director behind Marvel’s “Ant-Man?”

While there are these big themes at play, with the movie making these big points and metaphors for the world we actually do live in, the reason “The World’s End” is so likable is because the main characters are strongly developed and they have a compelling story, even without the robot thing. What happens when two people are best friends in their youth, but then they let that friendship get pissed away in a tide of bad feelings and worse decisions? For much of this movie, Gary and Andy are not getting along like Gary wishes they would, like they once did a long time ago when they were best mates and didn’t have some bad history between them, and it’s interesting to watch this dynamic play out, especially when the sci-fi shit hits the fan and the pressure and complications are added. Maybe its because I enjoy the actors, or maybe it’s because the story really worked for me, but I wanted to see these guys get along and be friends, and hopefully find a way to save the world together.

“The World’s End” is the best kind of movie because it is fun and interesting, gets over the top and funny without losing its heart, and while it uses genre tropes and references movies we all know and love, it still stands out as an original film compared to everything else that’s been coming out, which means it won’t make that much money because this is America, and in America we like to complain about Hollywood’s lack of creativity while only going to the theaters to see sequels and books based on teen lit. Come on, America! Get out there and see this great movie, and then maybe go down a couple of pints.