The World's End

It’s good, but my expectations were higher. Hot Fuzz set the bar very high, blending with more grace the serious plot of a thriller with parody. The World's End tries to blend this style of humour with a horror sci-fi thriller, but it grinds a bit (though not as much as, in my opinion, Shaun of the Dead), sometimes the humour is too much, sometimes not enough. What I’m most sorry about is the weird and unnecessary end-credits scene, it ruins the positive impression of the bold and surprising twist with which the film had won me over. (09/29/2013)

Wright, Pegg and Frost are back and in excellent form, this time in a beer-drinkers’ sci-fi about the threat of technology taking over. Almost non-stop situation gags, the action looks like a typical bar fight, crossed with kung-fu. The special effects are excellent, the story gets you thinking. Welcome to the end of the world! (11/08/2013)

Once again, they didn’t disappoint. Not only do they overwhelm the viewer with 110 minutes of explosive, uncompromising and unspecified humour, but they also very successfully continue their trend of bold parody of everything they could think of when writing the script. They've already taken on zombie horror and action-crime movies, only to kick the ass of all the "revolutionary" science-fiction creators whose stories have often had little to do with originality for a good few years now. The first half works very well as pure comedy, mainly thanks to Pegg's notoriously peculiar Gary, who, through emptied pints, attacks the position of the best character ever created by Simon, while the second, marked by an alien conspiracy, blue-blooded robots and the constant presence of tremendous insight and great gags, is already the perfect genre ride that perhaps everyone has been eagerly awaiting from the Wright-Pegg-Frost trio. Making fun of everything and giving absurd dimensions to absurd things doesn't always pay off and of course it has its flaws, but when all that is wrapped in a beer marathon and played by five extremely likeable drunks they just couldn't go wrong :D And they didn't.. 80% (12/24/2013)

I'll be upfront — I've got a soft spot for Simon Pegg. But even with that bias aside, this film landed as my least favorite among his works, both as an actor and a screenwriter. Why? It felt like a rehash of Shaun of the Dead with a few tweaks. And frankly, that just doesn't cut it for me. The cast looked promising and I couldn't wrap my head around why this film had such a low rating. Well, now I get it. Compared to Shaun, Hot Fuzz, and Paul, this one fell noticeably short, leaving me with the impression that Pegg might've rushed through the screenplay. Aside from a handful of standout moments, I found myself less entertained than usual — even bordering on boredom, which is a first for me with the Pegg/Frost duo. The only silver lining? I finally understand why they use blue blood in certain ads. / Lesson learned: When things don't go as planned, don't lose your head. (01/06/2024)

I'm wavering between three and four stars, and that's ultimately one of the biggest surprises that The World's End brought me. The other ones are that Simon Pegg is similar to Tomas Hajíček from the band Krucipüsk, that Nick Frost plays a truly completely different character than you would expect, at least at the beginning, and that Edgar Wright seems to have abandoned his typical bullet shots, or at least is trying to limit them, because there are noticeably less of them. I can't say that I was completely disappointed, but the fact is that I liked The World's End a lot less than the previous two films. I thought it was too long and unnecessarily action-packed (the first encounter with the UFOs was great, but the others just repeated it - and not in the funny "déjà vu" sense). Kudos to the music (the irresistible “Whiskey Bar" scene by The Doors) and all the actors, and I really liked the epilogue. I was thinking that is was too bad that the first half of the film didn't take place "before" and the second half "after". I round down the three and a half stars for now with a heavy heart and will wait to watch it on DVD.__P.S. I don't know how much the other viewers enjoyed the film, I was alone in the movie theatre. (11/10/2013)