4/5
The World's End is a delightful finale to a delightful pseudo-trilogy about friendship, aliens, and the end of the world. The movie starts with Simon Pegg reuniting with his high school buddies (Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan) on a quest to relive his adolescent dream of drinking a pint of beer at each of the 12 pubs in his bucolic hometown. A few pubs in, they discover that the town has been taken over by aliens masquerading as good-natured townsfolk.
The movie is just as outrageous as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, with exciting fight scenes, well-written dialogue, and rapid-fire British jokes. But two-thirds of the way through you realize that the filmmakers deceived you: it will not end as predictably or simplistically as you might have thought or hoped. It will stretch the limits of your expectations and your imagination in a way that will put a smile on your face and a twinkle in your eye. The World's End is a smart movie, sharp-witted with lots of insight and inside jokes that will keep you glued to your seat, but there is nothing formula about it. If you prefer the winding path of uncertainty to the well-trodden one of genre filmmaking, then The World's End goes highly recommended by me.
IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1213663/