Film review: The World’s End

Have you ever played darts?

You know when you’re perfectly lined up with the board?

And you feel confident?

You take the first dart in to your throwing-hand. You feel the weight of the dart. You balance the dart between your fingers and thumb.

You assume the throwing position.

You zone in on the target area: the fat end of the ’20’.

You ‘pretend throw’ the dart, to make final adjustments to how you are going to release it.

You hold your breath, concentrate, draw back your arm and throw – with precision – the dart at its target.

You repeat these processes two more times.

You walk up to the dartboard and, smiling, you retrieve one dart from the ’20’, one dart from the ‘five’ and the third dart from the ‘1’.

But it’s OK, because each dart scored something.

And one of the three hit the area you were aiming for.

You know this feeling?

Well this is the same feeling as watching The World’s End.

It’s a long way short of the ‘100’ that Shaun Of The Dead scored.

And it’s a long, long, long way short of the ‘180’ that Hot Fuzz effortlessly produced.

But it’s not that bad.

It scores something with each dart.

But, at ’26’, it’s a zillion miles away from the maximum score that Hot Fuzz scored with such an easy flourish.

The World’s End assembles a beautifully-balanced cast.

The production qualities are, for the most part, excellent.

But there’s something about the finished product that feels very average.

There’s an old expression about ‘phoning it in’ (often levelled at Richard Burton for his performance in Where Eagles Dare).

In The World’s End it feels as if almost the entire cast is phoning it in.

Busking.

Hacking their way through the story.

The story concept, that the inhabitants of a sleepy English town have been replaced by robots (except, as we are painfully told and told and told and told again, the original meaning of the word ‘robot’ is ‘slave’ and these ‘robots’ aren’t actually ‘slaves’), is a good one.

But the writing is long on just a few very ordinary visual gags, and short on quality brain fodder.

The acting feels stuck in third gear.

And, when I walked out of the cinema, at the end of the film, I just kept thinking ‘Is that it?’

Unfortunately that is actually it.

The World’s End: 4/10