The World's End

A 40-year-old boy who never grew up (Simon Pegg) dragoons four pals (Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan) into returning to their hometown and repeating the epic pub crawl they got too drunk to finish back in their youth. The others have all moved on with their lives, but his enthusiasm brooks no denial. Still, all misgivings seem justified when they find the old town eerily changed. The script by Pegg and director Edgar Wright begins as a fast-paced British working-class comedy, with jokes coming almost too fast to catch. Then, it suddenly (and seamlessly) morphs into a latter-day Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with our boys battling an invasion of passive-aggressive aliens. It's high old fun, though it plays as a bit too much of a rehash of Pegg and Wright's Shaun of the Dead.