This is the Way the World Ends, not with a Bang but a Beer??

Sometimes the critics are just plain out to lunch, or in this case, off on a pub crawl. This is one of those times. The new movie with Simon Peg (aka Scotty in the Star Trek reboot), Martin Freeman (aka Watson and also Mr. Hobbit) and several other familiar British faces on the surface might have been a fun, and funny movie. Its given a 90% rating by critics and its been out several weeks now.

The premise is simple— get the old gang together and head back to the old hometown for a night of celebration— in this case a pub crawl through umpteen pubs. Simon Peg plays a guy in deep therapy— Gary King. The rest of the guys play solid citizens, with families.

Now frankly I don’t find watching other people get inebriated fun or funny. I am not a Hangover movie kind of guy. Alcoholism is, especially in a big beer drinking country like America or the U.K., not a laughing matter. Yet the critics promised that this was a funny movie, some spoke of belly-laughs. Not so much.

And then the movie just became weird. Turns out the town of Newton Grove where the pub crawl happens has been taken over by aliens, aliens who have been sucking the DNA out of the city’s folk (well most of them), and replacing them with ‘blue-bloods’, basically robots that bleed blue goo. So ‘the Hangover’ meets a Zombie movie (take your pick, maybe Woody Harrelson’s zombie movie).

In fact the only line in the movie that I found funny was about the Bible. The old gang (all five) have squeezed themselves into King’s old car. One of them draws an analogy with the three Musketeers. One of them says– “You do know that the Three Musketeers is a work of fiction by Alexander Dumas?” King retorts “Sure, just like the Bible.” Another one chimes in asking “Alexander Dumas wrote the Bible?” King retorts “No dummy, Jesus wrote the Bible.”

Sadly, this is not the worst movie I have ever seen, but its in the top five. Even if you take it as farce or satire, it’s still sad and pathetic. It’s the kind of thing a writer or producer would dream up and think was cool…… after a pub crawl involving consuming 10 or more pints of ale, or bitter… In my view, this movie ails, and it left me bitter. Don’t waste your money or time.