The World's End: The Last Lick of the Cornetto

The Cornetto trilogy began with Shaun of the Dead, a marvelous send-up of the zombie apocalypse genre. Next up was Hot Fuzz, a high-octane cop caper that simultaneously mocked and glorified the buddy cop tradition. Now the trilogy comes to an end with The World's End, an existential comedy with a sci-fi twist.

The plot revolves around Gary King (Simon Pegg), a middle-aged alcoholic who has steadfastly refused to grow up. He decides that he needs to relive the happiest time of his life, which was a night twenty years ago when he went on a massive pub crawl with his four best friends (one of whom is of course played by Nick Frost). Their aim was to do the "Golden Mile," i.e. get a pint at twelve different pubs in their hometown of Newton Haven, but they never made it to the last pub, The World's End.

Gary rounds up the old gang, all of whom have grown into responsible adults and are none too pleased to see Gary again. In fact, it becomes increasingly clear that Gary's memories of that night are far rosier than his companions'. Still, he convinces everyone to return to Newton Haven for one more attempt at completing the Golden Mile. They discover the pubs have undergone the "Starbucks" treatment and are disappointingly uniform, but more disturbingly, the people seem a bit uniform as well. At which point the story takes a sudden sci-fi twist.

The World's End fully demonstrates Edgar Wright's and Simon Pegg's flair for elaborately satirizing and celebrating popular movie genres. However, this final installment of the trilogy is also introspective and reveals that our heroes are finally growing up. The relationship between Simon Pegg's and Nick Frost's characters is explored with much more depth and the tension between them builds and boils over in unexpected ways. They are no longer men trapped in perpetual adolescence but men who have to face the harsh reality of being adults, albeit in the midst of an alien invasion.

The World's End is bizarrely funny but there's a more somber edge to the proceedings as Gary is forced to examine how he has wasted his life so far. Of course, with a supporting cast consisting of Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, and  Rosamund Pike, there's plenty of humor, drunkenness, a thumping "Madchester" soundtrack, and solid British self-deprecation. It isn't my favorite of the trilogy, but it still seems like a fitting finale to what was always a very weird and delightful set of films. Edgar Wright has directed this movie with his trademark flair and although it veers off into a completely existential tangent, it contains all the laughs and surprises that made each movie in the Cornetto trilogy such a delicious treat.