D: Edgar Wright. S: Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg. P: Nira Park, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner. Cast: Simon Pegg, Martin Freeman, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan. UK dist (Blu-ray/DVD): Universal.

The epic finale to the Wright/Pegg/Frost “Three Cornettos Trilogy”, The World’s End may lack the timed-to-perfection pace of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz but remains top-notch fun, once it recovers from a somewhat flabby opening. Unusually for this team, the film takes some time to get going, spending its first two reels laying out the basic character setup of its five protagonists. A gang of old schoolfriends gather again after years apart to restage a key event in their youth: an abortive attempt to complete “The Golden Mile”, an epic pub-crawl in their boring hometown of Newton Haven. They never made it to the twelfth and final pub, The World’s End, a failure which has assumed hugely symbolic proportions in the mind of the group’s erstwhile leader, former hell-raising cool-kid Goth-boy Gary King (Simon Pegg). Though Gary’s devil-may-care philosophy remains apparently intact after all these years, it masks a deeper dissatisfaction with forty-something reality (which, in his case, incorporates drug abuse, alcoholism and general loserdom); in recreating the crawl, he hopes somehow to fix all that’s wrong with his present life. Using his indomitable charisma, Gary persuades his reluctant friends (Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan) to join his quest, and (with considerable misgivings) they return to Newton Haven in his clapped-out Granada.

Once the pub-crawl begins, it’s not long before things start to go badly wrong. The group dynamic is shaky at best; Gary has pissed off just about every one of them in one way or another over the years, and resentments seethe under the surface. Andy (Frost) has never forgiven Gary for making him drive him to hospital, four times over the limit, after a suspected heroin overdose; when the car crashed en route, Gary conveniently scarpered, leaving Andy to face the police alone. Oliver (Freeman) disapproves of teen Gary’s heartless dumping of his sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) after a quickie in the disabled toilets during the first Golden Mile. Lovelorn Steven (Considine) disapproves of this even more strongly, and has carried a torch for Sam ever since. Peter (Marsan) is the least resentful of them all, though Gary did run him over once with his own motorbike. Gary’s a feckless, lying, irresponsible, self-centred twat, basically, though (as his friends exasperatedly concur) There’s No Point Arguing With Him As He’s Never Wrong. With the crawl on the verge of disintegration, Gary nips to the Gents – and inadvertently gets into a brawl with a teen who turns out to be (wait for it) a kung-fu-fighting blue-blooded alien robot, part of an invasion force that’s already taken over most of Newton Haven (and, it seems, much of the outside world). Keen not to let the aliens know that they know what they’re up to, the friends decide to maintain a façade of ignorance and continue with the crawl as if nothing has happened – a policy that becomes ever less-tenable as pub follows pub and robot skirmishes escalate into all-out war…

The central idea of The World’s End is irresistibly silly: a band of pissheads, doggedly persevering with a pub-crawl while trying to fight off an alien invasion, has a certain absurdist genius. Relationships between the friends are well-delineated, as you’d expect from this team, and many of the exchanges are first-rate. A curmudgeonly viewer might carp that the overall setup is rather too similar to Hot Fuzz – boringly conformist English town conceals a sinister conspiracy – but it’s hard to see that as a real demerit, given the energy and inventiveness displayed elsewhere. The human-v-robot scraps are expertly choreographed, a dizzying blur of action involving dozens of stunt performers (and the five principals), achieved through a blend of wire-work, CGI and martial arts. (Especially exciting is the pub melée in which Pegg is continually thwarted from finishing his pint, while action swarms around him.) As the friends lurch from one pub to the next, their decision-making skills in steady decline, seasoned pubgoers will find themselves smiling in rueful sympathy.

The World’s End wobbles a little at the start, and a little at the end: the gear-wrenching finale seems to belong to another film entirely, though since it sets up the best Cornetto gag of the trilogy, the inconsistency is easily forgiven. While The World’s End was initially thought to mark a parting of the ways between Wright, Pegg and Frost, the trio recently announced their intention to reteam for a new trilogy over the next decade,a prospect which has this fanboy’s expectations firmly stoked. The team’s individual projects have not been without merit, but it seems inarguable that they’re at their best when working together. Details are sketchy-to-non-existent at present, but let’s hope the first of these projects arrives sooner rather than later; if it tastes half as good as their three Cornettos, we should be in for a treat.