Just got back from Hot Fuzz, and loved it. Like ‘Shaun of the Dead’ it was an excellent blend of action and comedy. The penultimate action scene dripped with irony, as an entire quaint English village erupts in gunfire.
One possible nitpick I hope a UK legal doper can help me sort out. In one scene the main character arrests a shoplifter, but the store manager declines to ‘press charges’. I thought that the English legal system worked differently, as it was a plot point in a Frederick Forsythe short story. If the authorities are aware a crime’s been committed, don’t they bring charges on behalf of the Crown, or some such? Has it changed since the 70’s when that short story was written?
Jumping in just to say that my boyfriend took me to this movie on my birthday, but I knew nothing about it other than it was by the Shaun of the Dead folks. We ran into several of my friends there, and we all loved it. We’ve been asking each other “Have you ever shot two guns whilst jumping through the air?” in cockney accents for the last week.
Saw it with a friend, loved it. Couldn’t forget the scene with the church spire, and the scene with the shopping carts, and all the banter, and Angel buying his partner a house plant, and…
Such a great movie. We went to the 11PM showing then immediately came home and watched Shaun of the Dead. Hot Fuzz really made up for my ATHF:MFFT disappointment and then some. Highly recommended, although as in SotD the movie may be hysterically funny but the gore is quite realistic. I had to turn my head at a certain moment.
And it has Timothy Dalton in it! What’s not to love?
My boyfriend has an aversion to British comedy (which sort of sucks because I have an obsession with it), so he begrudgingly took me to see it on my birthday Saturday. I had been waiting for quite a while for it to come out.
I was not disappointed! It was very Simon Pegg ('cept there was no pot.) The end scenes with the gratuitous violence were brilliant My boyfriend laughed the entire time and now doesn’t think that British comedy is that bad.
Anyone else see previews for Pegg’s NEW new movie, Run, Fatboy, Run? And the new movie starring “George Michael Bluth” from Arrested Development? Awesome.
I liked it, but there was something off-putting about it. Not the over-the-top editing (which was a gag that went WAY too headachey-long), or the violence, which was really gruesome at times, but something about the stance it took on the movies it parodied.
I guess it was this: Shaun of the Dead, which I loved, seemed like an affectionate satire of zombie movies. You could tell these guys had seen and loved every zombie movie ever made (“We’re coming to get you, Barbara!”), and they weren’t so much making a satire of zombie movies as they were making a zombie movie, with some good comic elements to it.
Hot Fuzz, by contrast, seemed like an indictment of rogue-cop movies, rather than a good-natured spoof; there was something brutal in the way it overdid the harsh, hyper-stylized look of those movies. It was funny, but it was funny because you’d realize they were doing all this absurdly over-the-top stuff as a parody of other movies.
I guess what I’m getting at is that you could enjoy SotD without having seen the movies they were spoofing; with HF, if you hadn’t seen any of those cop flicks, it would seem like the dumbest movie ever made. Hope that makes sense.
The first half was alright, the second half was just silly, and tried way too hard to be funny. (kicking an old lady in the head? Oh yeah, that’s comic genius :rolleyes: )
I think the “spoof of Michael Bay” description is really misleading. And I agree if it was two hours of that, it would get very trying. The reason it’s so great is that it borrows from many different movie genres, and (to my mind) affectionately ribs them. The village atmosphere and quirky residents evoke comedies like Calendar Girls or Saving Grace. That and the murder mystery also borrows heavily from Agatha Christie, and much of the movie parallels The Wicker Man (the original!), with echoes of Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, and other paranoia-themed thrillers. Then the climax draws on the foundation laid by Danny’s cinemania to open up a can of whoop-ass that contrasts hilariously with all the former elements.
And I for one thought the kick to the face was brilliant - the whole point is that it is awful, terrible, and cringe-inducing, taking the “hero kicks righteous ass” to a ridiculous place, while at the same time it somehow retains a certain element of “Hell yeah!”
Kythereia, which church spire scene? I think they are both pretty memorable, but I think the second one takes the cake.
In any case, the whole thing is worth it just to watch Simon Pegg’s face as he watches Romeo & Juliet. I was laughing my ass off. Seriously, if I had this on DVD, I’d have already watched it again once or twice.
I agree. Pegg is really good at getting just the right facial expression so that he doesn’t need to say anything. The scene you mention, and also the one where Dalton’s character says, “He killed Bill Shakespeare!” made me a new Simon Pegg fan. (Haven’t seen Shaun of the Dead yet, though.)
Hmmm…I kept reading about the movie and how it was a “send up” of all sorts of cop movies. An honest-to-goodness spoof.
Apparently, I have not seen too many cop movies, because I just did not see that. It was a story about a cop who was “too good” and sent to a small village to be the new officer, he didn’t gel with the existing officers, madness ensues. And the end part was just a Pegg/Wright/Frost wankfest of shooting, carnage and chase scenes (thoroughly enjoyable, though!)
Maybe I would have found it even MORE funny if I had seen a lot of cop movies but I enjoy Pegg and Frost enough to have enjoyed it anyway.
I thought it was a little too long. The first half of the movie, with all the Agatha Christie, village murder mystery stuff dragged on and on. The gags weren’t really that funny. The coven twist was lame.
Once it got to the action movie sequences, it was a little better. I liked when Simon Pegg started talking like Clint Eastwood and they were both spouting action movie cliches. The whole third act was pretty good but all the lead up to it was kind of snooze inducing for me. I don’t think I really laughed out loud a single time during the movie.
The crowd in my theeater was into it, though. They were clapping and shouting all throught it. The jump kick to the old lady’s face got a rousing cheer. I just felt like I wasn’t getting whatever everybody else was getting out of the movie. I didn’t think it was bad, just kind of so-so.
I thought Shaun of the Dead was overrated too, though.
I’m not a legal doper, but I’ll answer based on my experience.
Charges can be pressed without the consent of the victim, but the victim’s wishes carry plenty of weight as to whether the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) take the case.
For example. I was the victim of an assault last year. I did not wish to press charges, but the police felt I should and referred it to the CPS. The CPS decided not to take it further - their reasons were my reluctance to press charges and they felt the case was not in the public interest.
I have to disagree here. I laughed every single time there was a quick-cut-crash-zoom transitional montage showing Angel opening a door, filling out paperwork, or otherwise performing mundane tasks.
The genius of this film, to me, is how it gets so deep inside the conventions it’s mocking. If you watch it just as a movie, I can see how it would just be “meh.” You really have to look below several layers to see the wicked grin on the filmmakers’ faces.
ETA: And it’s the little things that really elevate the movie. The Chinatown reference, for example, was one of those gags that sailed over the audience’s head and then looped back and smacked a small number of people several seconds later.
My boyfriend laughed the entire time and now doesn’t think that British comedy is that bad.
(They were paintball guns, for the record.)