My Review of "The World's End"

The World's end came out back in 2013. I was so excited when I heard this movie was coming out back in the day. Being a fan of both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz I was expecting great things for this next iteration. It had the same great ensemble back together again and seemed like it was following in the footsteps of its predecessors. I was definitely disappointed when I first saw this movie.

It all starts off with the introduction of Gary King. He's talking about the exploits of his past which introduces us also to his best friends when he was much younger. They all seem to have a great relationship with one another. It also seems as though his life had peaked at the end of high school.

We soon realize that Gary is explaining this story at an alcoholics anonymous group. So you can't really take what he's saying for actual truth. There's probably another side of the story. We later learn that is definitely the case when Gary has this brilliant idea to get the gang together for one last bar crawl.

You see in Gary's story the gang never finished their 12 pub bar crawl. It was a bucket list item for him to complete this crawl with his friends. So he decides to get the gang together and finish it once and for all. The problem is that everyone has grown up and they're definitely not the kids they used to be.

We see everyone has moved on with their lives with family and careers whereas Gary is still living in the past. Somehow he's still able to convince them all to go on this wild ride with him and they get the adventure of a lifetime. Of course things aren't what they seem in this small rural town.

There's a lot of social commentary on a lot of things in this movie. They talk about gentrification of neighborhoods and life in general. Though I think these messages were a little heavy handed and didn't quite always fit into the theme of the movie.

The quick witty banter is slathered throughout the movie. This is one of the saving graces of this movie. You can have a ton of fun listening to how they add all of the puns and witty remarks throughout their conversations. It's kind of a mile a minute so I can see some people enjoying this again watching it over again.

Though I don't think I could repeat watch this movie as much. The first two movies played upon our expectations and made fun of us as the audience as we watched. This movie doesn't really do that. We're kind of in the dark as to what is going to happen next and a lot of the witty things they did in the first two movies are not present in this one. There is a lost sense of fun with this because we're no longer part of the joke. The joke is just revealed to us as the movie goes on.

I don't think this is a horrible movie it just doesn't seem as though it was constructed as well. It's as though it wasn't as much a labor of love that the first two movies were. You can tell those previous movies were well planned and executed. This one felt as though there was a lot of intervention and things got slapped into place out of convienience.

Overall, I was still able to enjoy this movie mostly for the dialogue and the charisma of the cast. Unfortunately I didn't feel that it was well constructed or polished like the last two movies. I wouldn't be able to do repeat viewings of this one. That's why I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. It's really unfortunate because I was hoping this would end off in a really high note.