Entertainment

‘The World’s End’ can’t come soon enough

When five friends set out on a drunken comic spree and find themselves in a low-grade horror flick instead, I guess you’d call it a genre bender. But it isn’t that the mix of styles doesn’t suit “The World’s End.” The movie independently bungles everything it tries, like a Central Park busker who simultaneously sucks at juggling, harmonica playing and skateboarding.

It’s disheartening to move a director from the “exciting newcomer” pile to the “faded promise” stack, but it’s four films in for director Edgar Wright, and his limits are already apparent. Together with his co-writer and star Simon Pegg, he came up with the excellent “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” then (minus Pegg) delivered the excruciating big-screen video game/headache “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.”

Reuniting with Pegg, Wright seems to be outgrowing teen fixations at the start of “The World’s End.” The movie begins like a rueful, perhaps even reflective comedy about an unreformed 40-year-old party animal (Pegg) who gathers his four straitlaced friends to complete a doomed pub crawl they all attempted as high-schoolers.

“The World’s End,” starring Nick Frost (from left), Simon Pegg and Paddy Considine, misses the sweet spot that made “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” come to life.

“The World’s End,” starring Nick Frost (from left), Simon Pegg and Paddy Considine, misses the sweet spot that made “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” come to life. (Everett Collection)

But the central character is stuck in 1990, ribbing his friends about losing their virginity. He is (partly because Pegg has miscast himself) obnoxious rather than hilarious, his four friends (Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan) are as bored as we are being straight men, and we’re left to wonder why any of them are bothering to waste their (now valuable) time with this charmless loser.

Apart from a few funny lines (and a brilliant Madchester soundtrack) the movie is a total failure as a beery “The Big Chill.” Then everyone is attacked by robots posing as ordinary citizens, and the movie is a total failure as a laddish “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

And it drags on, with a blustering swarm of special effects as the boys still (inexplicably, tiresomely) scramble to hit every pub on their itinerary. If watching others drink beer were fun, we could all save money on movies and hang out at the tavern, couldn’t we?

The (far too many) fight scenes between the friends (who suddenly turn into ace brawlers) and the robots have no urgency to them; Wright seems to think the bots look cool with bits of their faces broken off, but this affectation ruins the action. The creatures aren’t very scary if they can be ripped apart like cabbage, are they? Nor is their boss (voiced by Bill Nighy). He seems to wander in from “The Matrix” to bring in some dull exposition in a pointlessly long, sluggish scene at the end, when things turn apocalyptic.

You can’t blame Wright and Pegg for the bad timing of putting their film out two months after the similar but much funnier comedy “This Is the End.” No, you can only blame them for wasting your time trying to cover up the lameness of their jokes with the loudness of their effects.