Movie Review: The World's End

  I try to keep track of how many movies I see in the theater each year by reviewing them here, but I got really behind over the summer. That's OK though, whenever I'm short of time or drawing a blank trying to come up with a blog post, I can play movie review catch-up.

 The last date-night movie we saw was "The World's End," another sci-fi/horror/comedy with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (the guys from "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz.") Since we're both geeks, we don't go for the usual rom-coms, and this movie was right up our alley.

 Five guys who were buddies in high school but drifted apart, head to their hometown 20 years later to recreate, and attempt to finish, an epic pub crawl. (The final pub in the crawl, one they never made it to in high school, is named 'The Worlds End.') In the process, they find things have changed since they left; the hard-drinking party guy is on the wagon, their ultra-cool-in-high-school leader is now a loser stuck in the past, and oh yeah, everyone in the town has been taken over by alien robots. The guys have to figure out what's going on, stay alive, and try to finish the pub crawl in one night.

 Fans of "Shaun of the Dead" and British humor will definitely enjoy this one. The movie does a great job of building the guys' characters and personalities -  you get to understand who they are and where they're coming from, before the crazy alien-robot stuff starts. A lot of sci-fi movies don't seem to get that awesome CGI isn't enough by itself, a good movie also needs a fun story and people to care about.   I did at times have trouble deciphering the accent when the actors talked too fast - this will be a good one to watch on DVD, where I can back up and replay scenes where I missed some of the dialogue the first time.