REVIEW: The World's End

The World's End (2013): Dir. Edgar Wright. Written by: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan. Rated R (Language, robot blood). Running time: 109 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

The World’s End starts promisingly as a the-boys-are-back-together comedy, slips into sci-fi mediocrity roughly a third of the way in, and ends with a slapdash epilogue so lazy, it feels like an insult, or maybe a mistake. The film was directed by Edgar Wright and written by Wright and Simon Pegg, who previously collaborated on the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead and the (even better) tongue-in-cheek buddy cop movie Hot Fuzz. In both of those earlier films, as well as this one, Wright and Pegg meld the comedy of small town caricatures with more conventional genre-movie entertainment.

Their films also have a wry, distinctly British wit. They aren’t afraid to go for the jugular (sometimes literally, by way of decapitating a character), and for the first half hour or so, The World’s End appears willing to mine some good, uncomfortable laughs from its reunion of middle-aged blokes.

The organizer of this class reunion is Gary King (Pegg), a hyper, alcoholic mess of a guy. On a whim inspired by some mid-life crisis combo of boredom and desperation, he decides to get his old mates from high school back together for an epic pub crawl called the Golden Mile. Twelve pubs in one night, a pint (or more) in each one, is no easy feat for anyone, certainly not a group of men pushing forty. As teenagers, their first attempt at the Golden Mile left them passed out in a field somewhere between pubs nine and ten, getting sick all over themselves (which is also to say it was a smashing success).

The friends are played by a charming and accomplished group of actors that include Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan. Nick Frost, again taking up his usual sidekick role beside Pegg (though, for the first time, as the straight man), plays Andy, Gary’s former best drinking buddy turned teetotaler. An incident from his and Gary’s post-grad years has made him swear off booze (as well as his friendship with Gary), but darned if his old friend can’t drag him back out for one more night.

Andy and the rest of the guys eye the former leader of their group with a mixture of morbid fascination and deep concern. He hasn’t changed a bit. He even still drives “The Beast,” his 1989 Ford that coughs black fumes at the slightest bump in the road. For a while, they enjoy the nostalgia of being in his company, but the sadness of his situation soon sets in. Watch the worried looks Considine and Freeman exchange when they realize Gary has been jamming out to the same cassette tape since high school, some twenty years ago.

The first act of the film is rich with moments like that one, suggesting that The World’s End is heading for bold, uneasy comedic territory. Pegg’s performance walks a careful tonal tightrope. Gary is the type of eternally upbeat guy who wants you to have a blast but just ends up depressing the hell out of you because it’s painfully obvious how in denial he is.

But an earnest set-up is wasted with a hard left turn toward science fiction that, this time around, feels forced rather than inspired. A plot about extraterrestrial robots taking over the guys’ hometown has potential for satire (they also find that the once colorful characters of their favorite pubs have been homogenized as a result of corporate buy-outs, a fate that mirrors the alien takeover) but it belongs in a different movie.

The World’s End’s jarring shift of gears also allows it to duck out of dealing with the more complex and interesting issues its characters face, such as settling into middle age, dealing with alcoholism and the effects of nostalgia.

Instead there are a lot of fight scenes, which are hectic, decently choreographed, squirt blue synthetic blood all over the actors, but are nothing special, really. I find it hard to recommend The World’s End even as simple-minded fun when you can just rent 2011’s way cooler, more inventive and way better alien invasion movie Attack the Block (also produced by Big Talk Productions, the same company that produces all of Edgar Wright’s films).

Fans of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz may be satisfied enough with The World’s End but I’d be surprised if it attained anything near the cult fandom of those movies. There are enough good scenes and chuckle-worthy jokes to remind you of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s earlier successes but the movie ultimately becomes as weary as Gary King does to his friends. You wish it would dispense with the distractions, grow up and deal with something real.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/28/13

REVIEW: Blue Jasmine

Blue Jasmine (2013): Written and directed by: Woody Allen. Starring: Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Louis C.K., Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg. Rated PG-13 (Booze is drank and things are said). Running time: 98 minutes.

4 stars (out of four)

When we first see Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), she seems well put together. Elegant, riding in first class, lounging in her chair like she’s just bought the world on credit, she dishes the details of her divorce to the elderly woman seated beside her. Gabbing all the way to baggage claim, you might call her overly chatty or brazenly forthcoming with personal details, but she certainly presents herself as a picture of poise.

Blue Jasmine, the new film written and directed by Woody Allen, depicts the steady unraveling of this woman’s persona. Bubbling just underneath her designer clothes and meticulously maintained golden blonde hair is a twitchy, desperate woman who, we learn, has just suffered a nervous breakdown and appears to be on the verge of another.

Allen often writes neurotic characters into his scripts, usually as a stand-in for his own anxious persona, but Jasmine is a far more complex character than the typical dyspeptic types found in so many of Allen’s comedies. Her problems run much deeper than phobias and a surly worldview; her life of luxury has been violently ripped out from underneath her, a fact she attempts to avoid with corrosive self-deception.

Through conversations and flashbacks, we learn that Jasmine’s husband Hal (Alec Baldwin), a hugely successful entrepreneur, has been convicted of fraud. His empire, including Jasmine’s cushy Park Avenue lifestyle, turns out to have been built on lies and deceit, and has subsequently been snatched away by the U.S. government.

Now broke and hopelessly lost, Jasmine turns to her couldn’t-be-more-different sister, Ginger (a charmingly dizzy Sally Hawkins), who graciously takes Jasmine in despite their past. (Ginger and her ex-husband Augie (Andrew Dice Clay, somehow both gruff and cuddly) were collateral damage in one of Hal’s schemes.) Jasmine will live with Ginger and her two young boys in their modest San Francisco apartment, at least until she gets her feet back on the ground.

The film’s tone ducks and weaves with Blanchett’s performance. One moment, Blue Jasmine is a social comedy, the next it’s an unnerving portrait of mental illness. The comedy comes largely from Ginger, her new mechanic boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale with a hilariously long strand of hair slicked behind his ear), and a spare handful of the people who enter and exit their lives. (Louis C.K. has a nice supporting turn as a competing love interest of Ginger’s.)

These characters are a rowdy and deeply flawed bunch, and from Jasmine’s condescending, undeservedly privileged vantage point, they seem painfully uncultured. On a lunch date with Ginger, Chili and his dopey pal Eddie (Max Casella, getting the biggest laughs of the movie), she doesn’t just order a vodka. She orders a Stoli with a twist of lemon.

But these people are also full of life. Compare them to Jasmine, who walks around in a fog of misery, bumping into men both good and bad (Peter Sarsgaard as a widowed and heartbroken man with great ambitions, and Michael Stuhlbarg as an unsavory dentist).

All the while, Jasmine’s past follows her around like a malignant shadow. The story of Hal’s crimes is more than just fabulously juicy gossip; it is part of her identity. It’s how she gets introduced at parties. She can’t escape it.

Woody Allen has juggled the comedic and the tragic before, but rarely with such a deft touch. He has an ear for idle conversation and his social dialogue is as on point as ever. But he also shows an unprecedented boldness by presenting Jasmine as a very real, very complicated individual. The script hits some decidedly minor notes. Sometimes these moments are offset with comedic relief. Sometimes the laughs come from a less comfortable place.

Allen is a terrifically prolific filmmaker (he’s stayed on pace at a movie a year for more than four decades), though not a very consistent one (his films fall all over the map in terms of quality). Blue Jasmine ranks in the highest tier of his work and is perhaps his best film since 2005’s simmering noir thriller Match Point. It’s a smart, compassionate and funny film, anchored by Cate Blanchett’s remarkable performance. Jasmine is wretched but also vulnerable, bitter but sadly disillusioned. There is much that is buried deep inside her and Woody Allen proves a fearless excavator.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/22/13