From the team that previously produced Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz comes this tale of an epic pub crawl: five droogs (four more-or-less productive members of society; one charismatic unredeemed alcoholic), twelve pubs along the "Golden Mile" in a soulless English suburb. Starts out like a comedy, begins to look like a bromance, turns into Invasion of the Body Snatchers about halfway through, except that none of the human principals in any of the pod people flicks were falling-down drunk. Highly amusing, although I suspect that as a rude colonial I was deaf to the whooshing sound made by certain cultural signifiers as they streaked by overhead. The coda was a little lame, and could have been shortened, but at the end I was well-pleased as I clicked the remote control. Perhaps best of all, the closing credits featured a ditty I'd heard on the radio about a quarter of a century ago, had assumed at the time to be the work of David Bowie, made desultory attempts to track down, and never identified. Turns out to have been "This Corrosion" by the Sisters of Mercy, which I have playing on iTunes even as I post. I readily acknowledge that this story marks me as tragically unhip, but I am sixty-one, and solicit the indulgence that youth ought properly to extend to the senescent.

And the flick is worth catching.

cordially,