Review: Hot Fuzz

UK release date: 14th February

Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright — the team behind zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead — return for this gleeful pastiche of American action movies. Pegg stars as a top London policeman transferred to a crime-free village where all is not as it seems.

What begins as a very funny, very British murder mystery eventually mutates into an ironic action spectacular that blows up half of Somerset. Armed with a Who’s Who of home-grown acting talent and a surfeit of gags, Hot Fuzz also showcases the continuing comic partnership of Pegg and co-star Nick Frost. Their mismatched cops play out every buddy movie convention imaginable while discussing subjects as diverse as ice-cream “brain freeze” and the homoeroticism of action thriller Point Break. More smart than silly, this is self-confident comedy that’s proud to be British.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 15

Review by Jamie Russell

News: Simon Pegg

Former Shaun of the Dead and Spaced star Pegg is, with this week’s Hot Fuzz, making yet another strong case that he’s the first British comic with a real chance to make it big in America since Peter Sellers – but will he be able to maintain the momentum?

He’s certainly got a fair few more in the works – from a planned new sitcom about a pub quiz team (with his Spaced, Shaun and Hot Fuzz co-star and real-world best buddy Nick Frost), La Triviata, due some time this year through to the animated stoner comedy Free Jimmy, for which Pegg wrote the English screenplay (it was originally Norwegian) about a junkie elephant on the run and provides voice duties alongside the likes of Woody Harrelson, Kyle MacLachlan, Samantha Morton, David Tennant, Emilia Fox and Phil Daniels.

But there are also some bigger projects on the way, like the romantic comedy The Good Night, with Martin Freeman, Penelope Cruz, Danny DeVito, Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Gambon, or former Friends star David Schwimmer’s directorial debut Run, Frat Boy, Run, with Pegg starring alongside Thandie Newton and The Simpsons‘ Hank Azaria.

By far the most promising, however, is Pegg’s starring role in a big screen adaptation of Toby Young’s bestselling memoir of life at a high-end New York magazine, How to Lose Freinds and Alienate People – to be directed by Robert B Weide, best known for his work on the cult comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. That could well be enough to get Pegg into the Hollywood comedy A-list…

News: Edgar Wright

The Hot Fuzz director, much like his co-writer/star Simon Pegg, seems on the verge of great things. He’s already completed his next project, the Jack Black-starring conspiracy theory comedy Them, based on the book by Jon Ronson, which (once it gets a release date set) could prove promising. Then – surely one of the highest accolades for a cult director – he’s contributed a fake trailer to the much-anticipated Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriquez B-movie double bill that is Grindhouse.

Then come two comic book adaptations – though not quite the standard superhero fare that has so inundated our cinemas in recent years. First comes Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life, from the cult 2004 comic about a slacker twentysomething who ends up in supernatural kung-fu battles with the ex-boyfriends of the girl he has a crush on. Could be intriguing… And after that will come an adaptation of Marvel’s Ant-Man – sort of like Spider-Man, only not as well-known. Or good. But considering Wright is also penning the screenplay – with The Adam and Joe Show‘s Joe Cornish – it’s a fairly safe bet that this isn’t going to be a straight-faced take on the character. With the little information currently available, this could show promise as well…