The World’s End | What to Watch

Another winner from director Edgar Wright and his co-writer and star Simon Pegg, following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz

Another winner from director Edgar Wright and his co-writer and star Simon Pegg, following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Slacker Pegg cajoles his estranged childhood friends Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Eddie Marsan into going back to their cosy home town to re-create an epic pub crawl, 12 pints in 12 pubs, that they failed to finish as teenage mates.

Pegg is determined to recapture the best night of his life, although these days Frost is sticking to water and the others have become fairly sober-sided, too.

However, as the quintet begin their crawl, encountering Freeman's sister (Rosamund Pike) along the way, it gradually dawns on them that something very weird has happened to their old haunts since they left.

You will need to watch to find out why the town's pubs have turned into corporate clones and why its residents look so blandly conformist, yet we can reveal that co-writers Pegg and Wright have stuffed the film with glorious gags, fizzing action scenes and cannily timed surprises.

At heart, though, this is a shrewdly observant and hilariously funny story of male friendship and the perils of hanging on to the past.