Second thoughts set in before they even get to the first pub, of course, and everything that the hyped-up Gary touches seems to turn to chaos. As trip leader, he takes the Starbucking of his favorite haunts very personally, and the fact that nobody seems to recognize him anymore even more so (cue ominous foreshadowing music). Romantic subplots get introduced as Oliver’s sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), who once had sex with Gary and regretted it, and for whom Steven has carried a torch for decades, shows up at the second pub that they visit.
Most of the humor in the first half of The World’s End veers between the tired stuff of bromance movies, made a bit more palatable somehow by being delivered in British accents, and rather clever jabs at contemporary corporate homogenization. But when the reluctant cadre gets to pub number four, hotheaded Gary gets into a fistfight with a belligerent young local in the bathroom, with results reminiscent of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail – except that the robots who have been replacing the townspeople bleed bright-blue goo when they lose a limb (or a head).
Things just get sillier from that point on. The more obvious it becomes that there are hardly any real humans left along the Golden Mile, the more determined Gary becomes to finish his 12 ritual pints. Luckily for him, the drunker they get, the more his old friends seem to remember their youthful street-fighting skills. Even the portly Andy becomes impressively badass when the going gets tough. Reaffirmations of friendship and a long-overdue bit of soul-searching on Gary’s part punctuate the string of barroom brawls, leading to a verbal confrontation with the alien robotmakers when Gary and Andy finally make it to the World’s End.
That climactic scene relies too much on exposition and is probably the least convincing in the whole movie; but this isn’t the sort of film where one puts much stock in plausibility, and at least we get to find out where the modern world’s plague of cell phones came from. The pleasure in watching The World’s End – and it is considerable, for such a lightweight cinematic exercise – derives mainly from the snappy, often quite funny and sometimes slightly melancholy dialogue, and from the excellent ensemble acting.
That’s particularly true of Simon Pegg, who is the centerpiece of nearly every scene and thoroughly embodies the concept of a human who refuses to be folded, spindled or mutilated, even if that also means being a bit immature and conniving. Though American audiences have become more familiar with him through his spirited reinvention of Scotty in the two J. J. Abrams Star Trek movies, it seems likely that The World’s End will prove his true breakthrough effort here in the Colonies. His manic energy, reminiscent of the younger Jack Nicholson (but with an English accent), propels the film to heights of socially conscious zaniness that make for a most enjoyable couple of hours in a cinema. It might even inspire you to undertake a pub crawl of your own – if you can still find a few taverns in your town that don’t look exactly alike.
