Too silly for its own good, but still quite an amusing and entertaining follow-up to Shaun of the Dead

Rating: 6/10 (20 April 2014)

Trading a zombie invasion with a small town killing spree, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are still the ones to save the day in the Brit comedians' follow-up to Shaun of the Dead. But though maintaining a steady rate of laughs, Hot Fuzz doesn't continue all of its predecessor's filmmaking virtues and is not all too much more than an average comedy.
It's most obvious over all of the film's exorbitant two hours of running time that its cast and crew were having a whale of a time shooting the ridiculous action and dialogue scenes, between which the buddy cop spoof alternates, and that fun is transmitted to the audience in most films. However, Hot Fuzz feels silly and over the top in right about every frame and, no matter how unserious Pegg, Frost, and co. were when on set, the picture shown on screen doesn't seem like a parody at all, but like a comedy using all the idiotic elements of bad action or crime films for their own project and one, that doesn't sarcastically comment the moronic events happening but acceptingly lets them go by. In a picture of regular length, the imbalance between actual jokes and unwitty physical humour wouldn't have carried that much weight, only Hot Fuzz isn't a picture of regular length and, without any exaggeration, spends its complete final half of an hour on the latter sort of comedic entertainment, of which I am the least bit fond of.
When it comes to the real gags though, the second part of the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy highly pays off and likely (I didn't keep a list) induces more snorts of laughter than both of the other two. Each and every one of the innumerable cameos of famous British thespians is superb to see and the film's running gags and grotesquely gruesome homicides are easily one of the best of their sorts of all comedies out there, and thus fully making up for the storytelling flaws and enabling a perfectly entertaining and intelligently funny movie night – just not a very perfect or intelligent movie.