The World's End - first look review

Back in the golden days (1994) Blur's Damon Albarn used to bang on about the "Coca-colanisation" of Britain. The steady bleed of American culture into his cuppa tea fantasy of the UK.

It's not an ideology you'd expect to see spun into mainstream comedy in 2013. We have iPads now. We eat from gourmet burger stands. The merger between Brit Corp and the US Inc seems to have gone ahead smoothly. Yet here come Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright with The World's End - a satirical sci-fi comedy that chips away at modern Britain and raises a pint to an old English brand of messy eccentricity.

Gary King (Pegg) is a late 30-something obsessed with a legendary night - 20 years ago - in which he led a gang of mates through the trim streets of Newton Haven to attempt a 12-pint pub crawl. That night whited out before they reached the final boozer. Now Gary's forcing the gang to give "The Golden Mile" another go. This time nothing - not rain, nor fire, nor an invasion of Stepford Wives-style alien replicants - is going to stop Gary reaching the final pub: The World's End.

Reluctantly joining the crawl (and brawl) are Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine), Peter (Eddie Marsan) and Gary's former best friend Andrew (Nick Frost). They're grownups with wives and jobs and grudges against Gary. They're about as ready to down lager as they are to put a bar stool through a marauding alien's head. They'll be doing both before time's called.

With Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz Pegg and Wright made a career out of delaying adolescence, propping pop culture against the door when the real world came knocking. The World's End is their best work since Spaced because - through Gary - they explicitly acknowledge the habit. This new film is full to busting with pop references (Wrestlemania, Batman, LEGO, The Matrix); drunk on a retro soundtrack of Primal Scream, Suede and The Soup Dragons; and as in love with long-term male friendship as anything in their back catalogue, but they offer Gary as a foil. He's both a memorial to his own youth and a clever bit of self-analysis from the film-makers. Namely, that there's a sweetness and sadness to the idea of a man who wears the same outfit and listens to the same music as when he was a teenager - even if those passions have made him rich and famous.

Gary may not have changed in 20 years, but Newton Haven has. There's contemporary art in the town square. The pubs have been franchised, scrubbed into conformity. The people aren't much better. They're glossy-eyed and dull spirited. A result of the alien invasion of course, but perhaps also a comment on our increased tendency for obedience. And the carelessness with which we let our culture slip into uniformity. The scene in Shaun of the Dead in which Pegg's character walked to the shops through a zombie apocalypse without noticing anything amiss made a similar point, but it's intriguing to see Pegg and Wright underpin a whole film with a socio-political statement. It suits them.

Oh, and The World's End is funny of course. Like the idiot bastard son of Morecambe & Wise and HG Wells funny. There are puns and sight gags and juicy dialogue for the ensemble cast (great - particularly Marsan and Considine as the straight guys) to swig at. Wright directs with his usual flair (though perhaps the fast cut/kooky transition thing is a bit tired now), Pegg and Frost still revel in their damaged men-boys working through a broken friendship routine.

The World's End marks the third part of Pegg and Wright's self-described "Cornetto trilogy" (with Shaun and Fuzz). It's an appropriate moniker. With this final film they've slowed down a bit, grown up a lot. And saved the richest bite until last.