IN PRAISE OF THE CORNETTO TRILOGY

IN PRAISE OF THE CORNETTO TRILOGY.

It’s only on completion of the Cornetto trilogy (2004's Shaun Of The Dead, 2007's Hot Fuzz and 2013's The World's End ) that it becomes clear how important these films are, both to British comedy and the comedy scene in general.

At the time box-office humour had become dominated by American men/women behaving badly, with gross out movies like Bridesmaids and unsubtle fare like Anchorman generally becoming the most prominent. This trend even saw acting greats like Robert De Niro mining for (and missing) comedy gold; meanwhile parody films referenced movies which were themselves self-aware (such as the Scary Movie franchise ripping off the likes of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer) and, much like the Austin Powers series, to ever-diminishing effect. But if this reversion to a kind of Porkys/American Pie frat boy humour was unedifying British humour was also failing to translate to the big screen. TV adaptations of successful shows like Keith Lemon and Mrs Brown’s Boys were getting critically savaged, whilst 1970s farce revivals like Run For Your Wife took the kind of media mauling that the legendarily bad director Ed Wood would have thought let him off lightly in comparison.

Where to go for intelligent, well-observed material, that took a fresh approach to subjects that were overdue for lampooning and including a touch of crude humour, horror and gore, whilst not sinking to the level of unimaginative rip-off? Well, as it turned out it would be to co-writer/director Edgar Wright, co-writer/star Simon Pegg and Pegg’s best mate/co-star Nick Frost, who kicked off the Cornetto trilogy with Shaun Of The Dead. For non-Spaced fans the appearance of the film initially seemed like a blatant piss-take of the same year's similarly zombie-themed Dawn Of The Dead; whilst sexy, brooding vampires dominated the post-Buffy/Twilight TV and film schedules now it was the ravenous, rotting flesheaters. But unlike other then-recent horror films with British involvement such as the underrated but strange Robert Carlyle and Guy Pearce movie Ravenous (1999), which dealt with cannibalism in long-ago America, this would be a slice of comedy-horror which would resonate with anyone in contemporary Britain. Shopping malls and freeways were replaced as settings by bland appliance stores, corner shops and arguments with the in-laws.

Straight away Pegg and Frost’s double-act grounded the film in an amusing but oddly poignant world. Pegg’s Shaun is a downtrodden product of soulless, aimless city life, whilst Frost’s lazy, sofa-bound slob Ed rejects even this, clearly happier crashing permanently at his best mate's house with his ‘pissed at 4am’ lifestyle than becoming a wage slave. Yet in many ways the zombie attack – whilst amusingly missed by our protagonist until it literally arrives on his doorstep – is the wake-up call he needs to prove his assertiveness and to avoid wasting his life. In many ways Shaun has himself become a zombie (referenced through his bleary-eyed, slouching and groaning morning routine) and it is only through impending disaster that he finds his inner resolve, fights for his loved ones and becomes the leader he has struggled to be in his working life. The film took a well-worn genre and mined it for laughs whilst showing an affection for it, and putting a healthy slab of self-effacing character humour and poignancy into it too.

The humour comes from the use of recognisable British locations (notably the beloved Winchester pub) in a quasi-apocalyptic setting, physical gags that would run through the films (the fence-jumping stunt), references to classic and less-regarded pop culture (Pegg & Frost’s characters debating which vinyl records they can sacrifice by using as missiles against the encroaching undead) and Wright’s use of flashy, pop video-style jump cuts. There's even the occasional breaking of the fourth wall, such as in the sequence where Shaun debates the best way to save his loved ones and holing up “to wait for all this to blow over”. However the story is kept flowing, there's a real sense of pending doom undercutting the comedy and the threat of the undead is shown as very real – the moment late on where one self-serving character is torn to pieces is shocking in its explicitness. Much like the Monty Python films – which themselves battled the decline of British cinema in their time – the film didn’t need an appreciation of the sitcom which preceded them to be enjoyed, though one episode of Spaced ("Art"), where Pegg’s character played the survival-horror classic video game Resident Evil 2 and, similar to many who did (such as me) starts to get hallucinations and think the threats in the game are real – inspired the idea. Overwhelmingly positive critical reaction indicated that Pegg & Wright’s creation had registered as much more than just a mickey-take of the similarly-titled American movie that had just come out, and opened the way for further entries in the series to have higher budgets and tackle new genres and themes.

The second movie, Hot Fuzz, attempted something even more ambitious than Shaun. It aimed to cock a snook at not just the quaint, genteel settings and tropes of the likes of Agatha Christie’s Hercules Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries and their subsequent ‘offspring’: long-running ‘murder in paradise’ shows like Midsomer Murders, but also at the locked-and-loaded 'jump sideways in slow motion whilst firing two handguns' clichés of American cop films like Bad Boys 2 and the homoeroticism of fellow action classic Point Break. The need for these extremes to be blended into a more conventional narrative led to a slightly muddled tone, as the movie had to balance the fish-out-of-water plotline of Pegg’s urban overachiever in a seemingly-sleepy Gloucestershire village with not just an OTT action finale but also with excessively gruesome death scenes, conspiracy theories, gothic imagery and creepy Hammer horror themes. The death of one character, for example is eerily reminiscent of the notorious ‘impaling’ scene from The Omen, albeit deliberately overplayed for icky laughs. The film also occasionally suffered from being so stuffed with genuinely hilarious quickfire gags that it risked becoming one of the few comedy movies to suffer from being TOO funny, if such a thing were possible. Even on repeat viewings though it’s noticeable the film doesn’t really stop for breath, which makes it perfect for the DVD/blueray era.

Yet Pegg proves his adaptability by convincing as the ultra-professional Sergeant, who unlike the laid-back Shaun is wound too tightly, and contrasts with Frost’s bumbling, brilliantly-named Danny Butterman, and the two rub off each other to positive effect as the film goes on. Furthermore a fine cast (Jim Broadbent, Edward Woodward, Billie Whitelaw, Paddy Considine and Paul Freeman, amongst others) populate the village with memorable busybodies and oddballs, and keep the film from descending into total anarchy. Particularly of note is a fantastic performance from Timothy Dalton as Simon Skinner, the prime suspect who oozes both charm and menace in equal measure. The movie gets great fun out of its settings, basing its most noisy, scenery-shattering fights and shootouts in the Somerfield supermarket (run by Skinner) and the nearby model village; the incongruity of the English eccentricity with American-style vulgarity and disregard for property is often side-splitting. One of the police recoils upon getting a facefull of Dolmio sauce, with a friend and colleague naturally assuming from his appearance and reaction that it’s blood; gunfights are punctuated by corner-shop door alarms and fruit machine jingles, whilst much of the damage done is to potted plants and Olde Worlde pubs. What the movie lacks in realism or coherent narrative it makes up for in its ability to make the ridiculous consistently hilarious, and perhaps this explains why it’s the highest-grossing of the three films to date.

The final movie, The World’s End, was the most symbolic and metaphor-laden of the trilogy and, perhaps unsurprisingly from its title, its darkest; subsequent reviews were more mixed than those for the first two films and reflected confusion at the changed tone. The movie saw Pegg’s atypically arrogant, self-centred lead – more of an anti-hero – lead his reluctant old schoolmates on an attempt to complete a pub crawl that fell short back in their teenage years, only to find that their old town has been populated with android versions of their old contemporaries. With a more combative dynamic between Pegg and Frost’s character this time around, for all the usual jokey banter, inspired physical comedy – notably by the surprisingly agile Frost – and funny flights of fancy (who would ever have thought A Winter’s Tale and Yogi Bear could combine to create a catch-phrase?) there was more of an edge to the gags, as the members of the old gang voiced their distance from their old personas and, as the film progressed, from their new personas too. King’s old schoolmates deride him as lacking their emotional growth, yet they still inherently accept he is still their ‘leader’. After just a few hours in his company, and after noticing that their old town’s inhabitants have been replaced by ‘blanks’, Body Snatchers-style, they have the choice of helping Gary fight back against assimilation or themselves be replaced by more compliant facsimiles.

From the start it’s clear that Gary King has many problems – his alcohol and drug dependency, and his inability to grow up, to the point that he still drives the same car and listens to the same music from his college days. Indeed the alien invasion is followed by a dark age due to his actions, yet the film still doesn’t present him as the villain of the piece, and even suggests that he is capable of bettering himself: the final scene has him conquering his drinking issues and fighting intolerance in the new era. His stubborn individualism presents him as a leader when faced by crushing conformity, and perversely a force for good – he is apparently nonchalant when suspecting one of his old friends may have been replaced by a blank, and for all the desperate battles with the replicas he is content to hang out with four of them (the college-age versions of his friends) in the film’s conclusion so he can continue to have his loyal friends and servants alongside him. His friends’ surnames (Knightley, Prince, Chamberlain and Page) reflect his superiority to them and indeed there’s meaning everywhere in this movie – look at the pub’s names reflecting the action taking place within as we travel around Newton Haven with our heroes. In terms of depth and analysis this arguably makes this film the most dense and rewarding for repeated viewings, particularly for those who like layers, even within a comedy film. Unlike the protagonist of Shaun Of The Dead who finds a maturity and responsibility within himself, Gary King triumphs because, in many respects, he does NOT grow up.

What’s impressive about the Cornetto trilogy is that the three films each took a different genre – red, blue and green(despite the blanks’ blood confusingly being blue), much in the spirit of the rather more high minded Three Colours movies, and told a different story in a different way, whilst being uproariously funny each time. Rather than merely take the skin of a genre movie and putting foul-mouthed modern slacker humour into it (such as the medieval-themed Your Highness) each of the Cornetto films blends slapstick, comic exaggeration, character comedy, the aforementioned incongruity – and is still potty-mouthed enough to appeal to a new, younger audience. Theme-wise there’s little similarity between the ‘Walking Dead in the suburbs’ of Shaun Of The Dead, the buddy-buddy aesthetics of Hot Fuzz and the 70s sci-fi paranoia of The World’s End, but one thing that connects the films is Pegg and Wright’s insistence that they are not parodies. In the case of Hot Fuzz that remains rather open to debate, even if the film seems to parody Britishness itself as much as cop shows or murder mysteries, but the film acts a fun interval between the two weightier, and occasionally bleaker, films either side of it in the trilogy.

So in an era of comic mugging, American brattishness and uninspired clowning, those looking for genuinely side-splitting funny antics would be well-advised to check out the Cornetto trilogy. You don’t need to be an aficionado of the source material, as the team were clever enough to realise that satire and spoofing always works best when the whole audience knows what you’re talking about, and they also recognised that for all the joking a full-length movie also needs characters and storylines to get involved with. Thanks to the vibrant performances, classic soundtracks, comic chemistry and effortlessly quotable dialogue they are arguably the most successful British comedies since the Carry On films… if you don’t count the Confessions series, of course. And like the Carry Ons they both celebrate and lampoon the British character whilst not worrying about being politically correct, and are as entertaining as is humanly possible to be along the way. Pegg, Wright and Frost, we salute you!