Drunk, disorderly and delightful
Shamelessly alcoholic tale soaked with barfly optimism despite apocalypse
In 2004, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost turned the horror film genre on its head with Shaun of the Dead, a comedy that supposed a zombie invasion ran smack into the pub-happy indolence of lower-class Britain and no one could tell the difference.
Now (skipping over the lukewarm police comedy Hot Fuzz) they have made The World’s End, which is essentially Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a couple of pints under its belt.
People lose their heads in this movie, but the ale never does.
It’s an improbable combination that is very funny and shamelessly alcoholic, and evokes — somewhere in the slurred collapse of its characters — a fond nostalgia for the good old days, i.e. the times when you became hopelessly drunk in traditional, authentic pubs rather than being hopelessly drunk in pubs that were designed by big corporations to look traditional and authentic.
The hangovers, it’s worth noting, remain fierce.
Pegg plays Gary King, a middleaged mess whose life’s dream (“we want to get loaded and we want to have a good time”) is juvenile, incorrect and irresistible. In 1990, he and four friends started a pub-crawl through the small town of Newton Haven, trying to have a pint at all 12 establishments. They never quite made it to the last one, The World’s End, and now Gary wants to reunite his buddies — all of whom have grown into jobs, families and a healthy aversion to Gary King — to try it again.
This time, he vows, they’ll get to the bitter end, or perhaps the lager end.
The friends, who can’t resist Gary’s dissipated enthusiasm, are Steven (Paddy Considine), Oliver (Martin Freeman), Peter (Eddie Marsan) and most of all Andy (Frost), the hardest to persuade. For one thing, he’s now teetotal. Andy: “I haven’t had a drink for 16 years.” Gary: “You must be thirsty then.”
The World’s End eventually becomes wearying — after a while it’s like being the only sober person at a party of heavy drinkers — but about 40 minutes in, it gets new life, or perhaps death.
It becomes a comic horror story about a looming apocalypse, and one of its running gags is that Gary is nevertheless firm in his goal of having a pint in all 12 pubs.
He’s heading to The World’s End even if the world is too.