is HOT FUZZ best film in 2007 so far?

Looking over the last month at trends in movies some truths are obvious while others are revealing. It’s no surprise that huge films unwinding worldwide simultaneously make lots of cheese. But think about it, those films have a short lifespan compared to films that achieve true cult status. Movies like The Big Lebowski and Kill Bill will still be making the rounds well after we’re gone, while instant hits like Spiderman 3 will be forgotten long before the sheen on their DVD surface has eroded.
Most surprising were the success of Disturbia and the mordant humor of Georgia Rule. Shia LaBeouf rules the roost as the new It Boy. Disturbia was okay as a thriller but not exceptional and its studio certainly didn’t think it was capable of dominating for nearly a month. The only way to ascribe it’s being numero uno for three weeks is Shia, soon to be seen in Transformers and Indy Jones 4; directors like him and he has a fan base, many of which are teens. At one point in the movie a character has broken into the garage of the next-door neighbor who may be a killer. “It smells like the corpse of a rotting hottie,” says he. Kind of says it all.
Being for or against a particular actor accounts for why some watch a certain movie. You may avoid movies with certain stars because you don’t like the glow of their wattage. Lindsay Lohan, currently in Georgia Rule, is one of those types, but to disdain her (or Jane Fonda) merely means you’ll miss out on some good laughs. Lohan has solid acting chops, and they’re on display in Georgia Rule, an odd duck of a film that wavers between melancholy and sweetness even as it struggles with issues of child molestation. The funny stuff unfolds with the serious stuff, only the serious stuff has a lining of seditious humor.
But comedy can be so much more as seen in Hot Fuzz, my personal favorite film of the year. Hot Fuzz is funnier than Knocked Up, which is a laugh riot.
Hot Fuzz isn’t strictly a comedy. Directed by Edgar Wright and written by Wright along with lead actor Simon Pegg, Hot Fuzz banks on the stylized humor from their previous effort Shaun of the Dead. There are visual laughs, physical slapstick laughs, clever dialogue laughs, and some insane gore (car accidents, church steeples falling on people) thrown in for good measure.
Firm in its social satire, Hot Fuzz actually falls into the genre deconstruction camp as it progresses from breezy English countryside comedy to suspense thriller to a balls out buddy film with a snide tip of the bobby’s cap to such American actioners as Bad Boys 2 and Point Break. Occasionally Hot Fuzz lifts a few bits from the previously mentioned films with Pegg muttering “This shit just got real,” or his country bumpkin cohort Nick Frost recreating a male bonding scene from Point Break.
The ads proclaim: From the guys who’ve watched every action film ever made. You’ll believe it after seeing the intensity Wright uses in the editing of chase scenes. The feeling Wright gets with his transitional montages evokes Aronofsky in Requiem For A Dream (one of over a dozen film references sprinkled liberally throughout). But Wright uses sounds and rhythm in a way of his own, so much that you can identify it like a signature. The way Sam Raimi’s films used to look (think Evil Dead or The Quick and the Dead).
Pegg plays police Sergeant Nicholas Angel, such an A-type personality that the London division transfers him to an idyllic crime free village in the country. Angel fits in like a square peg with the usual line-up of eccentric Brit characters that populate the police service and town. Jim Broadbent and Timothy Dalton co-star but keep your eye peeled for cameos from Cate Blanchett, Peter Jackson and Steve Coogan. Increasingly violent and gory but in a manner that balances its primary comic tone Hot Fuzz would be a worthy alternative to the summer spate of tentpole uberfilms.
A British film by birth that’s been a huge hit in Europe, by the time Hot Fuzz opened domestically last month it had made over 40-million internationally. Projections have the fuzz reaching 30-mill domestic. Consider the film Perfume, which had grossed over 100-million internationally only to land in America without a campaign of any kind. Perfume limped away with less than a couple of million domestic a few weeks later.
Knocked Up provides plenty of situational laughs. KU should be a breakout part for Seth Rogen whose work with writer/director Judd Apatow extends backwards to 40 Year-Old Virgin, beginning with Freaks and Geeks. Rogen has a Borgnine grasp on playing the regular guy type. There’s a shroom scene and close-up shots of the birthing process.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End closes with fighting pirates swinging back and forth between two ships, while the boats are swirling in a maelstrom. There’s an additional epilogue set ten years afterwards, but that’s after the lengthy credit roll. The theater had emptied by that point save for yours truly and the guy from comingsoon.net and his posse. The print I caught was digitally projected (house # 12 at the Edwards Grand Palace) in one of the theaters Disney has upgraded with such equipment. The image was consistently sharper that film projection, which says more about the condition of the projectors than the films.
The first one was okay, the second not so much, but the third Pirates has a steady dark tone (hanging women and children, purgatory scenes) that doesn’t vacillate between wacky and serious like its forebears. The Keith Richard cameo appears during a pirates round table that also features many international actors that will attract some attention in their respective countries. Ironically the main reason At World’s End opens all-at-once worldwide (industry reports peg the number of screens at over 25,000) is to combat video piracy.
An act of brotherly bonding, The Wendell Baker Story opens on June 8 exclusively at the Angelika Film Center. Directed by Andrew and Luke Wilson, and starring Luke as a happy go-lucky guy who can’t help but get into trouble the film delivers a laid back comic charm. Luke scores a triple double, carrying the film with a manic energy not apparent in his typical leading man roles. Owen Wilson pops up as a twisted bully running a health scam (reporting fake deaths) at a nursing residence. Will Ferrell, Eva Mendes, Eddie Griffin, Harry Dean Stanton, Seymour Cassel, and Kris Kristofferson supply back up. At the film’s world premiere at SXSW in 2005, Owen mentioned that the movie was as close to a sequel to Bottle Rocket (in tone) as we’re likely to get.