Ten years after the release of rom-zom-com Shaun Of The Dead, and five after the big-cop-little-town action comedy Hot Fuzz; Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's "Cornetto Trilogy" draws to a close with The World's End.
The film sees the charismatic Gary King (Simon Pegg) return to his hometown with his boyhood friends (Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan) after corraling them into completing the pub crawl they failed to finish when they leaft school in the early nineties. However, everything is not as it seems in Newton Haven, and the five friends soon find themsleves battling nostalgia, maturity, alienation and asimilation all the way to The World's End.
For fans of the previous "Cornetto" films, there is a lot to love about this final offering. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's script boasts the familiar intertextuality, repeated dialogue and big action in little English pubs, that made their previous films so hilarious and popular. The story also ties up the trilogy nicely, as a group of friends crack in-jokes whilst fighting off the apocalypse in a pub, whilst also attempting to uncover a sinister conspiracy involving the inhabitants of a small English town obsessed with maintaining the status quo.
However, that's not to say that this movie doesn't bring something new to this incredibly funny trilogy. Whilst not an obvious genre pastiche like its predecessors, the movie is more a cultural satire commenting on conformity, consumerism and conservatism in a nation that is in grave danger of losing the last dregs of its individuality. The pubs no longer have jukeboxes on random, and guns above the bar; instead they've been replaced by a series of identical, bland boozers devoid of personality. The World's End is therefore a fitting ending to the "Cornetto Trilogy", because we're no longer laughing at the juxtaposition of genre films set in Britain, but instead we're laughing that the British could easily have become a race of souless robots without anybody noticing.
The World's End is a hilarious, intelligent and emotional close to an arguably perfect trilogy. Wright's signature stylish direction, coupled with an insightful script, mark the end of an excellent decade for everyone involved in the trilogy with the Midas touch. How's that for a slice of fried gold?