Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2014

It’s the name of a pub. The last stop on a heroic 12-pint crawl that Gary and his mates failed to complete back in the ’90s, and it’s been eating at his development-arrested soul ever since. So he coerces and sweet-talks the now-middle-aged and by no means enthusiastic old gang into returning to their sleepy hometown and taking another shot at it. But once there, they begin to sense a certain vague difference in their old drinking grounds and the people there. Maybe you can’t go home again. Writer/director Edgar Wright, co-writer/actor Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are back with another spot-on satire, this time joined by Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman and Rosamund Pike. You’ll remember their sendup of Zombie movies with Shaun of the Dead, and their endearing homage to cop buddy flicks, Hot Fuzz. (Telling you the target genre this time would spoil your fun.) It’s clever, sad, wise and completely original. Pegg offers almost incidentally a penetrating portrait of an emotionally paralyzed man desperately holding on to his lost youth, when he was the carefree leader of the pack. See it. And cheers, mate. (109 min)