Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are a very underrated comic team, and their movies are bizarre, off-beat, edgy comedies with a golden heart. The World’s End is no exception – a bunch of 40-something guys attempt to complete a failed pub crawl from their youth, only to find that their old town is the spearhead of an alien robot invasion of Earth. Sounds every bit like a Simon Pegg film! And it certainly has its moments. The problem is it doesn’t really come together very well.

My take on Pegg and Frost is that Shaun of the Dead was just okay and Hot Fuzz was an absolute masterpiece. (I never saw Paul, the film about the alien.) The World’s End struck me as way closer to Shaun of the Dead than Hot Fuzz, in terms of sheer quality and impact. The main problems with World’s End are the story mostly negates the wonderful natural chemistry between Pegg and Frost, Frost is decidedly under-utilized in his character (and Pegg is a tad over-utilized in his,) the supporting characters are indistinct and under-developed, and I found the climax scene a bit tiresome and underwhelming.

I really wanted to like this film, but the most I got was a bunch of grins and chuckles. It’s still way more inventive than your average Hollywood comedy, however, and any fan of Simon Pegg’s writing should certainly give it a chance – when I saw it, the packed audience seemed to get a pretty big kick out of it.