The World’s End (Wright, 2013)
Hunting around for quality films that have been recently added to streaming services, I briefly got all excited about Del Toro’s Pacific Rim arriving on – probably for a short time – New Zealand’s ThreeNow free site.
More than ten years on I feel quite fond of it – and even have the sequel queued up for a rainy day – but it turns out that when I go back to my original review I find something else entirely:
… inspired by (and dedicated to) the great monster movies of the 20th century – stop-motion pasticine classics by the late Ray Harryhausen and Ishirô Honda (who made Godzilla back in 1954). This is a very 21st Century version, though, with state-of-the-art digital giant robots fighting equally digital slobbery giant monsters that emerge from a portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Aliens invading Earth again. The effects are breathtaking – it’s patronising to say that, yes, they really can do anything now, but they can! Like the crappy B‑movies that inspired it, Pacific Rim fails on character, acting and plot. The World’s End shows how you can honour your inspirations and still be great. Pacific Rim shows how loving bad films sometimes means you make bad films.
A paragraph which begs the question, why not just recommend The World’s End?
So, here we are. I loved it then, and I love it now.
The World’s End makes every other commercial film this year look like lazy, spineless hackwork. Tightly plotted, solid characters with real development, an emotional core, several layers of subtext – it’s all here and they make it look so easy. It’s 109 minutes and not a moment is wasted. They pack more gags into every scene than anyone has a right to expect and even the jokes advance plot, character and theme. It’s staggering. These three films (the Cornetto Trilogy) should be set texts at every film school, everywhere in the world. Flawless.
Also in that review (portions of which appeared in the wonderfully named FishHead Magazine): Steve Coogan as porn impresario Paul Raymonde in the disappointing The Look of Love, heavy-handed Israeli melodrama The Other Son, animated stinker Epic, and school holiday champion Despicable Me 2.
Where to watch The World’s End
Aotearoa, Canada and USA: Digital rental
Australia: Streaming on Binge
Ireland and UK: Streaming on Sky
Further listening
My love for this film has nothing to do with the fact that my Cinematica colleague, Kailey, and I were invited to the New Zealand premiere of the film, I chatted to Edgar Wright at the pub beforehand, and that we got to interview a hungover Nick Frost the morning afterwards. The Pegg-Frost-Wright trio had headed to Miramar after the premiere to party with Peter Jackson and they were very late for the media call.
But, gloriously, our ten allotted minutes with Nick Frost turned into twenty when he saw my West Ham badge and asked about the overnight result. Ten minutes of football talk later, he waves away the hovering publicist and we get to the interview. An all-time highlight.
Also, my conversation with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights last Friday is here. We talked about Donald Sutherland, Doc Edge, The Underground Railroad and The Nice Guys.
