![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Just saw WORLD'S END
Sep. 1st, 2013 08:29 pmSo, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ, and WORLD'S END are collectively known as the "Cornetto Three Flavors Trilogy", despite having no characters, worlds, or plot points in common. But, well, the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood "Man With No Name" trilogy doesn't have any characters in common, either, and his character has a name in two of the films, anyway. So that's all right, then.
Like the other two movies, this is one genre disguised as another genre. SHAUN is a romantic comedy disguised as a zombie movie. HOT FUZZ is psychological small-town horror disguised as a buddy cop movie. And WORLD'S END is a BIG CHILL/PETER'S FRIENDS-like story about discovering that you can't go back to who you were as a child, disguised as an Invasion of the Body-Snatchers. Although Lis thinks it's Invasion of the Body Snatchers disguised as Peter's Friends.
Oh, and they're all three funny.
One thing I note about the reviews and commentary among people who did and did not like these movies is that people who don't like them seem to be fans of one of the genres and not the other. But people who like both genres tend to love the movies.
I love WORLD'S END. In order to like this movie, you have to be willing to go along with a charismatic-but-unlikable addict whose antics in dragging his friends into terrible situations seemed cute and exciting when they were all seventeen, but is embarrassing and pathetic now that they're all pushing forty. Doing an epic pub crawl, drinking at every pub in town, getting into fights, and having drunken sex was a wonderful night for a seventeen-year-old, but re-creating it (well, parts of it, anyway) twenty years later? For the rest of his friends, that was a night that they look at fondly-ish, sort of, but they went on to have other memories -- but for him, he's never moved on from that.
He barges back into his friends lives -- who haven't seen him or each other in twenty years -- and convinces them to reunite. They do, out of a combination of curiosity, bemusement, pity, and the remnants of the respect they once had for him as teenagers. And they begin to discover what a sad, embarrassing, pathetic thing it is to try to pretend you're still seventeen.
That's the biggest part of the movie. I didn't time it myself, but I read a comment somewhere that the alien robot body snatchers don't show up unambiguously until more than halfway through the movie. So you have to be on board with BOTH genres to like it.
I am, and I do.
Like the other two movies, this is one genre disguised as another genre. SHAUN is a romantic comedy disguised as a zombie movie. HOT FUZZ is psychological small-town horror disguised as a buddy cop movie. And WORLD'S END is a BIG CHILL/PETER'S FRIENDS-like story about discovering that you can't go back to who you were as a child, disguised as an Invasion of the Body-Snatchers. Although Lis thinks it's Invasion of the Body Snatchers disguised as Peter's Friends.
Oh, and they're all three funny.
One thing I note about the reviews and commentary among people who did and did not like these movies is that people who don't like them seem to be fans of one of the genres and not the other. But people who like both genres tend to love the movies.
I love WORLD'S END. In order to like this movie, you have to be willing to go along with a charismatic-but-unlikable addict whose antics in dragging his friends into terrible situations seemed cute and exciting when they were all seventeen, but is embarrassing and pathetic now that they're all pushing forty. Doing an epic pub crawl, drinking at every pub in town, getting into fights, and having drunken sex was a wonderful night for a seventeen-year-old, but re-creating it (well, parts of it, anyway) twenty years later? For the rest of his friends, that was a night that they look at fondly-ish, sort of, but they went on to have other memories -- but for him, he's never moved on from that.
He barges back into his friends lives -- who haven't seen him or each other in twenty years -- and convinces them to reunite. They do, out of a combination of curiosity, bemusement, pity, and the remnants of the respect they once had for him as teenagers. And they begin to discover what a sad, embarrassing, pathetic thing it is to try to pretend you're still seventeen.
That's the biggest part of the movie. I didn't time it myself, but I read a comment somewhere that the alien robot body snatchers don't show up unambiguously until more than halfway through the movie. So you have to be on board with BOTH genres to like it.
I am, and I do.