Saturday, September 28, 2013

Movie Review: "The World's Word" (Edgar Wright, 2013)

APOCALYPSE NAH: WRIGHT'S "WORLD'S" FALLS FLAT
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

 Above: Nick Frost fights for survial in this sci-fi comedy extravaganza
 
A potent and disappointing film.  Director Edgar Wright (whose last venture was “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” a masterful satire of geek romance) reteams with muse and co-writer Simon Pegg, who stars as a drunken half-wit named Gary King.  As a teen, Gary once attempted to consume a pint at twelve different pubs in one night…but didn’t make it.  Now, reunited with his boyhood friends, he’s determined to finish the job and bring some “meaning” to his life.

            This sounds like a perfect set up for a “men behaving badly”/“The Hangover”-esque comedy.  And while there are some shenanigans of that nature, the movie is a strange mix—it combines crude humor with midlife male melodrama (in a climactic scene, Gary sobs sincerely about his suicide counseling) and bizarrely, violent scenes involving murderous alien robots.  The result is a movie that is startlingly unfunny and off-kilter—proof that it may be too early to hail Mr. Wright as a genius.  But the conclusion (which suggests that a world in which humanity is stripped down to its basest instincts might be a healthier, happier one) is intriguing and if the movie never solicits a laugh, it does summon forth the slightest, smallest tear.

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