'The World's End' --A Review

The Cornetto Trilogy of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright comes to a boozy, rip-roaring conclusion with the final installment, The World's End.

The World's End is the story of Gary King (a nicely disheveled, ragged Simon Pegg) a recovering drug addict that decides to track down his friends and complete a legendary bar crawl, The Golden Mile that they had attempted in their twenties only to fall short of the required 12 pubs in their hometown of Newton Haven.

Friends back together (including Oliver- played by Martin Freeman and a now sober Andy, played by Nick Frost) they start their travels, running into Oliver's sister, Sam (Rosamund Pike) along the way- both Gary and Steve have unrequited affection for Sam from their youth and things are a little awkward for awhile.  Eventually, as old feelings and resentments come to the forefront, Gary goes to the bathroom and get into a fight with a surprisingly strong teenager.  Inadvertently ripping his head on, his discovers that most of the town has, in fact, been replaced by robots.

The group decides to continue with the bar crawl to avoid raising suspicion- though when the hit the dance club, the men are seduced by robots in an attempt to steal their DNA and the robots realize that the jig is up when Sam recognizes her childhood crush, Adrian as having been killed in a motorcycle crash some years before.   This is when their old teacher, Guy Shepherd (Pierce Brosnan) appears and urges them to accept their fates and allow themselves to be replaced by robots.

Cutting to the end of our affair:  Gary reaches the final pub on the Golden Mile, The World's End and attempts to pour himself a pint only to find himself being lowered into one of the myriad headquarters of a disembodied alien entity called The Network, which reveals that it has been responsible for much of humanity's advancement in telecommunications over the past decades.  It offers Gary and Andy eternal youth but the two decline, arguing that humans should be free.   The Network abandons its invasion and ceases all communication as the Andy, Gary and Sam attempt to flee the self-destructing town

Andy finishes the story in the post-apocalyptic ruins of London- for The Network's departure set off a massive electromagnetic pulse that sent humanity spiralling back to the Dark Ages- and a green Cornetto label flutters by.

Overall: A wild, fun and entertaining end to the 'trilogy' begun in Shaun of The Dead and continued in Hot Fuzz.  Pegg and Frost are in fine form here and the usual touches (someone attempting to jump over a fence, a random Cornetto somewhere in the movie) are evident as its the quality of the writing.  Like it's counterparts, this is a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously and is drenched in fun.  I already own Shaun of The Dead and Hot Fuzz- it's hard not to envision adding this one to complete my trilogy.  **** out of ****.