Film Review: The World's End (2013)

I'll get the most important item out of the way first: this is the least funny of the so-called Cornetto Trilogy by the triumvirate of actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and director Edgar Wright. However, that still makes it a better than average comedy. It's not as LOL funny as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, but it's always amusing and it's hands down the raunchiest, funniest, most violent episode of Dr Who ever. The thumbnail plot description is that five old friends (sort of) reunite for a pub crawl in a small English town and have a spot of bother with some aliens. If there's a link between all three films in the trilogy it's that in each case our heroes end up in a life and death struggle with the middle-class locals. There may be a Marxist, beware-the-bourgeoisie message in there somewhere, and if so I'm all for it.

Even though The World's End isn't a great comedy, it deserves respect for being smartly written. Unlike the normal run of comedies this is a film that's trying to get its laughs with wit and wordplay. The jokes don't always work, or they just raise a smile, but it's nice to see a comedy that isn't aggressively stupid or mining the gross-out vein, which, of course, means Adam Sandler's nowhere in sight. And what does it say about the current state of action films that this middling budget comedy shows more style and flair in the running, jumping, thumping people department than most films with ten times its budget.

If there's one person who deserves special mention here it's Simon Pegg. It's no surprise he's funny, but it's becoming clearer with every film he does that he's also a fine actor. His character in the film is loud, brash and obnoxious, but the subtle way in which Pegg uses facial expressions to show thoughts and emotions is outstanding. And his vocal work is even better. This guy has a great voice; listen carefully and you hear an actor you should be taking a stab at the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V. In relation to this, watch the film's final scene, which features Pegg, and take note of what looks like a reference to King Arthur. The only footnote I'd add to Pegg's performance is that his character of Gary King, and even his performance, seems slightly modeled on Rik Mayall's turn as Richie Richards in the Brit sitcom Bottom. That's not a bad thing. So here's hoping the next chapter in the Cornetto cycle of films is Macbeth. Now there's a chap who had some trouble with the locals.

TV Review: Bottom (1991-95)

For those of you who don't like comedy that's rude, stupid and violent, please rummage around elsewhere on this blog for a post about some lovely paintings or one about a tasteful nineteenth-century Russian novel. Gone now? Good. Now just to set the mood here's a clip from Bottom that shows the two stars engaged in a typical bit of japery while camping out on Wimbledon Common.



Bottom is a British sitcom written by and starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonston, a comic duo who appeared together in The Young Ones and a variety of sketch comedy shows. The characters they play in Bottom are, respectively, Richard "Richie" Richards and Edward "Eddie" Hitler. As the title of the show suggests, this is a sitcom about two characters who are at the bottom of the barrel in everything: intelligence, personal hygiene, diet, living quarters, and morality. They also like to slap each other around the head with frying pans from time to time.

There's no doubt that this show is laddish and loutish to the max, but there's also no denying it's written with a lot of skill and a brutish wit, and the two leads, especially Mayall, are brilliant in their roles.  What's striking off the top about the series is that for the most part the episodes are duologues between Richie and Eddie. In fact, several episodes are wholly duologues, including one that's set entirely on a ferris wheel! Writing a dramatic duologue is difficult enough, so writing an excellent comic one set in a confined space deserves a lot of praise. According to Mayall and Edmonston, they got the idea for Bottom after appearing on stage in Waiting for Godot. That makes perfect sense, and they've done Beckett proud.

What stops Bottom from being just an exercise in vulgarity and excess (not that there's anything wrong with that) is the work that's gone into the characters of Richie and Eddie. They have a weirdly antagonistic and supportive relationship that makes their duologues wildly unpredictable; one moment they're trying to kill each other and the next they're united against the world. They also have an amusing habit of trying to affect an air of middle-class respectability. It's notable that they always wear shirts and ties (complete with tie clips!) no matter what hooligan behavior they're engaged in. Richie is especially class conscious, feeling that he's socially better than Eddie. This supposed class difference is the comic engine for a lot of their duologues.

I'm not going to claim that Bottom is one of the great British sitcoms of all time, only that I have an irrational love for it that annoys and horrifies most of my family (I have it on DVD). I recently reviewed Martin Amis' thunderingly bad comic novel Lionel Asbo, and what he was trying to achieve had already been done (in some respects) by Bottom. The main and important difference between the two is that Mayall and Edmonston actually know how to make people laugh.