Sunday Movie Matinee

Sunday Movie Matinee

The Cornetto Trilogy

For those of you who are unaware, there is a film out currently that is the third installment of a cinematic trilogy.  However, it does not have a roman numeral, or a 3, or even a designating subtitle in its name.  It is called The World's End and it is the completion of the Cornetto Trilogy.

The creative team of Edgar Wright (Director), Simon Pegg (writer/actor), and Nick Frost (writer/actor) have known each other for a long time and have collaborated on some of the funniest films of the last decade.  The films in question are of course Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the aforementioned The World's End.  They do not tell a continuous story, or relate in any wayto each other besides returning actors, a kinetic style of film-making and a love of the European ice cream brand Cornetto.

Shaun of the Dead was the first film of the three.  It could be most accurately referred to as a romedy-zombarody  (Romantic-Comedy/Zombie Parody).  What the film does well is integrate a relationship drama with the absurdity, horror, and symbolism of a zombie movie.  I heard it asked recently if the Parody was dead and it was bludgeoned to death by the creators of the (insert movie genre, noun, or the word "scary") Movie series.  They were saying that  the Mel Brooks' sized creative teams who put together great tributes and parodies of classic films and their tropes were gone.  But I say thee, "Nay."  Wright, Pegg, and Frost are great examples of how a group of people write a great parody movie.  You need to love it.  You can't just write a script making fun of the most recent vampire movie trailers you've seen because you hate them.  You don't make movies about specific movies that will most likely not be remembered in 3 months.  You write a script showing how much you like a movie or set of movies, and fill it with all the jokes you shared with your friends while you watched them all.  Great parodies come out of appreciation, not derision.  That appreciation can be seen clearly in the second film...

Hot Fuzz loves Bad Boys 2.  It also loves Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Die Hard, Point Break, Buddy cop films, and pretty much every over the top action movie ever made.  It has every element of a great action movie and amps it up to ridiculous heights.  Another important element to these movies is that they can stand on their own as great comedies.  Another mark of a great Parody.  If you can't fully appreciate a parody movie because you haven't seen this one movie, then it's pretty weak.  It can still be really funny, but your audience is considerably smaller than those of a Parody of a genre, not a particular feature.

And now we're at The World's End.  Before we had parodies of Zombies and Action films, and now we've come to Alien invasions.  I don't want to spoil this one for you, but it funny, poignant, and well done.  Hopefully this will not mark the end of the trio's collaborations, but merely the end of their cinematic love affair with blood and ice-cream.  Have a drink in their honor.

And if you're wondering what the ice cream has to do with any of it, I'll tell you...

In Shaun of the Dead they eat Cornetto on the couch before and after Zombie attacks.

And in Hot Fuzz, they pop into the conveinience store and enjoy a bitt of Cornetto in the car.

I won't say where they have it in The World's End.