Cinema Beef : Beef Scraps #2 : Booze, Buds and Blue Shit!

Stars: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike

Writers:

 Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright

Director:

 Edgar Wright

Pegg, Frost and Wright are back at it again.  This is the third film in the Cometto trilogy that's not really a trilogy at all.   The three films have different tones and types of characters.  The one thing this and the others have in common is the same camp of actors who seem to play off of each other so well.  This film is no exception.  The opening of the film starts with I guess out hero of sorts, Gary King (Pegg), in a support meeting of sorts.  I can only guess this because he looks like he drank himself through the ringer.  So bad that he is talking to a bunch of addicts about his proud exploits with him and his boyhood friends trying to tackle what is called in their village, The Golden Mile.  That's a legendary pub crawl that his friends and him tried to tackle when they graduated school but failed miserably.  Looking at this as his only big regret, mostly because he has nothing else to hang onto because he is still that same guy he was all those years ago, he decides to get the boys back together for one more go at the mission.

This film in short is, in my opinion, Edgar Wright's stunning and brilliant attempt to remake The Blues Brothers.  With the exception of Gary (Pegg) not being a jailbird at the beginning of the film, the similarities in in the film are kind of uncanny.  Not in a bad way at all.  Right from the beginning, he gets out of whatever facility he is in and he immediately wants to get the "band" back together for a "mission". Not from god of course.  Unless, god is in the form of a lager!  His pals, who want absolutely nothing to do with him, all have straight jobs and are as straight laced as they come.  When they finally get back together at the train station, Gary picks them up in the "The Beast", which was the same old Ford Granada he drove when they were mates.  He even describes the car parts he put into it. (ala Aykroyd's description cop shocks, cop brakes ect.) Past that, the plot similarities went kind of out the window. With the exception of the reaching of the final stop on their mission at The World's End. (The Daley Center in The Blues Brothers)

All the friend's join Gary on his mission with little or no enthusiasm going from pub to pub.  They soon realize something is not right when all the pubs in the town are not as they remember them.  They all look pretty much the same.  Very uniform as if Starbucks started a bar chain.  After a confrontation in one of the pubs restrooms, the fellows soon discover that this isn't the village that they left all those years ago.  It has been invaded by blue blooded robots!

The film continues as you would imagine you think.  The robots are aware that the fellows know they are not who they appear to be so many chases ensue.  Of course, stopping at all the pubs on the crawl.  Before I go way to far into the story, I will stop right here.  Mostly because it has an ending you would not expect. It is filled with a great story, funny dialogue, great use of CG, and genuine relationships among the main characters.  I am never disappointed with Edgar Wright's work.  I recently started watching the British sitcom Spaced for the first time.  A good watch but very short lived.  I had to go to a whole other state to see it.  My friend and co-host of episode one, Rico, and I went together. So it was kind of like we were on a mission of our own just to see this film.  A recommend for me to anyone who loves these kind of films.  Easily my favorite of the trilogy!

Grade : A-