Crawling the Golden Mile

by  Pa Rock
Film Fan

I squeezed into a small theatre (capacity 49) yesterday afternoon to watch the new release, The World’s End.   Even if I had known nothing of the movie in advance, I would have quickly deduced from the young and mostly male audience that I was going to be enjoying some type of cult experience. 

The film, the third in a series commonly called the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, actually germinated as a British television sitcom in 1999 that ran until 2001.  The show was called Spaced, and Edgar Wright directed all fourteen episodes.  The show’s two primary stars, Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, co-wrote each of the episodes.  A recurring character in the series was played by a relatively unknown actor by the name of Nick Frost.

The first actual movie of the trilogy, Shaun of the Dead, which dealt with a zombie uprising, was released in 2004.  That was followed by Hot Fuzz in 2007 and the current release of The World’s End.  All three movies were written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, directed by Mr. Wright, and starred Mr. Pegg as well as Nick Frost.  Several other very talented actors were featured in various segments of the film trilogy.  All three films had apocalyptic themes, though their stories were unrelated to one another.

The World’s End is the tale of five college friends who tried and failed to complete an epic pub crawl during their school days.  Years later at the insistence of one of the members, the group reunites to try and drink their way through twelve pubs known locally as the Golden Mile.

The twelve pubs, whose names all play into the story, are:  The First Post, The Old Familiar, The Famous Cock, The Cross Hands, The Good Companion, The Trusty Servant, The Two-Headed Dog, The Mermaid, The Beehive, The King’s Head, The Hole in the Wall, and The World’s End.  Not surprisingly, as the group works its way through the Golden Mile and toward The World’s End,  complications arise along the way, and by the time a few straggle into the final watering hole, The World’s End, the destruction of life on Earth is almost a foregone conclusion. 

It would have been a good night for the merry drinkers to have stayed home – but it was a great afternoon to take in a clever and most compelling flick.   All of that, and it had a great soundtrack!

Nobody does humor like the British.