New at the Movies: The World’s End, Pacific Rim, The Look of Love + School Holiday Roundup

I can imag­ine some peo­ple not enjoy­ing The World’s End. Peo­ple who don’t care about — or even notice — cin­e­mat­ic crafts­man­ship, peo­ple who think that being self-ref­er­en­tial means being self-indul­gent, audi­ences who pre­fer their action sequences to be cos­mic in scale and mea­sured in megabytes per sec­ond rather than laughs per minute — I expect those peo­ple might feel that the lat­est mas­ter­piece by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost goes sail­ing over their heads. After all, a film like The World’s End rewards con­cen­tra­tion (and sec­ond and third view­ings) where­as most block­busters rely on increas­ing­ly destruc­tive spec­ta­cle for audi­ences to get their kicks.

That’s not to say that this film is light on apoc­a­lypse — it promis­es the end of the world after all — but its core remains the deep friend­ships between men of a cer­tain age and how those friend­ships grow when test­ed — the same theme that infused their pre­vi­ous two films togeth­er, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

[pul­lquote]Pacif­ic Rim shows how lov­ing bad films some­times means you make bad films.[/pullquote]Pegg plays Gary King, mid­dle-aged lost soul, pin­ing for the glo­ry days of High School and des­per­ate to com­plete his mas­ter­piece — the 12 pub crawl through New­ton Haven known as “The Gold­en Mile”. He and his mates failed back in 1993 and he’s round­ing them up for one last crack at it. His four old mates (played by Frost, Mar­tin Free­man, Pad­dy Con­si­dine and the won­der­ful Eddie Marsan) are reluc­tant to leave their tidy grown-up lives behind but, per­suad­ed, they get to their old stomp­ing grounds only to find they are human­i­ty’s only hope to avoid inter-galac­tic coloni­sa­tion.

The World’s End makes every oth­er com­mer­cial film this year look like lazy, spine­less hack­work. Tight­ly plot­ted, sol­id char­ac­ters with real devel­op­ment, an emo­tion­al core, sev­er­al lay­ers of sub­text — it’s all here and they make it look so easy. It’s 109 min­utes and not a moment is wast­ed. They pack more gags into every scene than any­one has a right to expect and even the jokes advance plot, char­ac­ter and theme. It’s stag­ger­ing. These three films should be set texts at every film school, every­where in the world. Flaw­less.

Con­sid­er­ably less flaw­less is Guiller­mo Del Toro’s Pacif­ic Rim, a movie inspired by (and ded­i­cat­ed to) the great mon­ster movies of the 20th cen­tu­ry — stop-motion pas­ticine clas­sics by the late Ray Har­ry­hausen and Ishirô Hon­da (who made Godzil­la back in 1954). This is a very 21st Cen­tu­ry ver­sion, though, with state-of-the-art dig­i­tal giant robots fight­ing equal­ly dig­i­tal slob­bery giant mon­sters that emerge from a por­tal at the bot­tom of the Pacif­ic Ocean. Aliens invad­ing Earth again. The effects are breath­tak­ing — it’s patro­n­is­ing to say that, yes, they real­ly can do any­thing now, but they can! Like the crap­py B‑movies that inspired it, Pacif­ic Rim fails on char­ac­ter, act­ing and plot. The World’s End shows how you can hon­our your inspi­ra­tions and still be great. Pacif­ic Rim shows how lov­ing bad films some­times means you make bad films.

Anoth­er dis­ap­point­ment from a direc­tor whose pre­vi­ous I am fond of, Michael Win­ter­bot­tom’s The Look of Love miss­es an oppor­tu­ni­ty to use a sin­gle char­ac­ter to define a cul­ture they way, say, 24 Hour Par­ty Peo­ple did with rock jour­nal­ist Tony Wil­son and the Man­ches­ter music scene back in 2002. Steve Coogan is also the star of this one, play­ing Britain’s king of porn, Paul Ray­mond, who bestrode the seedy side streets of Soho like a mous­ta­chioed colos­sus for four decades.

From the nudie shows at the end of the pier to “classy” enter­tain­ments he hoped would rival the Folies Berg­ere and Moulin Rouge, Ray­mond was a very British smut-ped­dler. See­ing as my foot­ball team is suc­cess­ful­ly owned by two chaps who made their for­tunes from the very same cul­ture that Ray­mond start­ed, I’m not going to get prud­ish or judg­men­tal about the sub­ject. I can say that, by focus­ing on the drea­ry fam­i­ly dra­mas, the film miss­es an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss why Eng­lish adult enter­tain­ment was so grim, so class­less. It also relies too heav­i­ly on Coogan’s charis­ma to restore inter­est when it so often flags. Slop­py.

Lor­raine Levy’s The Oth­er Son is a heavy-hand­ed dra­ma about the fall­out from a mater­ni­ty hos­pi­tal mix-up in which an Israeli and Pales­tin­ian baby are swapped acci­den­tal­ly. Now they are teenagers and the truth is out. I’m not sure how often this actu­al­ly hap­pens, par­tic­u­lar­ly in an envi­ron­ment so fraught with sym­bol­ism to begin with, but some­how this film man­ages to make the age-old ques­tions of nature vs. nur­ture seem fair­ly turgid, and the hands of fate with which the film is con­cerned are sim­ply replaced by the equal­ly manip­u­la­tive hands of the screen­writer.

A quick final word on the bat­tle for school hol­i­day ani­mat­ed suprema­cy, rag­ing at a mul­ti­plex near you. Mon­sters Uni­ver­si­ty is anoth­er Pixar sequel mis­fire, pur­port­ing to tell audi­ences how beloved (at least by me) char­ac­ters Mike and Sul­ley met while nav­i­gat­ing Scare School. Despite the pres­ence of Helen Mir­ren among the voice cast, this one stank of straight-to-video. Big dis­ap­point­ment. I could have sworn that Epic was from the same peo­ple that made the Christ­mas bomb Rise of the Guardians but I was wrong! It’s been spray-paint­ed with the same can of ugly, though, that’s for sure.

Rip­ping off dozens of already suc­cess­ful chil­dren’s sto­ries (not least The Bor­row­ers), Epic is about a soci­ety of tiny peo­ple liv­ing har­mo­nious­ly in the woods, threat­ened by the forces of decay, pro­tect­ed by their mag­ic Queen (Bey­on­cé Knowles). When she dies before appoint­ing a suc­ces­sor, a shrunk­en human teenag­er (Aman­da Seyfried) is tasked with pro­tect­ing the sacred bulb, blah, blah, blah. It’s a decent sto­ry and my eleven-year-old com­pan­ion enjoyed her­self (and recog­nised more of the celebri­ty voic­es than I did) but, damn, it was ugly.

The cham­pi­on has to be Despi­ca­ble Me 2, pitched at such a young age that par­ents sim­ply have to watch with them (you would­n’t leave a four-year-old alone in a movie the­atre, would you?). This is box office dyna­mite! Two adult tick­ets for every child. In fact, I can’t imag­ine a bet­ter cin­e­mat­ic baby-sit­ter than this one. Unde­mand­ing slap­stick com­e­dy, ani­mat­ed to a very high lev­el, with max­i­mal cute­ness. I have to say, I felt noth­ing but I could sense the enjoy­ment com­ing from the lit­tlies all around me.

[Por­tions of this review pre­vi­ous­ly appeared in Fish­Head Mag­a­zine.]