A sharp action movie parody with plenty of laughs

Rating: 9/10 (14 November 2014)

In this second theatrical collaboration between Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright, they take on the buddy cop movie and deliver another slick, funny parody. Simon Pegg is Nicholas Angel, a good cop who is too good, in fact. So good that he is sent to the sleepy village of Sandford, because he was making his fellow Met cops look bad by comparison. While there, he stumbles on a conspiracy and sets out to stop it by any means necessary. One thing this movie definitely had going in its favor was that I enjoy action movies a lot more than horror movies. That's not to say I disliked SHAUN OF THE DEAD, but I like the action genre more. Like its predecessor, HOT FUZZ deals with genre clichés in a fun way while never exclusively relying on them to mine laughs. There was also a lot of references to other action movies that I thought were hilarious. And speaking of humor, I felt that this film was a significant improvement in terms of comedic writing from SHAUN OF THE DEAD. There was the more subtle British humor, which I am warming up to, and the more up-front genre-derived humor. Both work extremely well, and all of the actors deliver it perfectly. The only quibble I have with this film, though, is that it's about 10-15 minutes too long. This is mostly due to the ending, which feels like it could have ended at a couple spots, but then kept on going. What was there was funny enough, but in my opinion it could have been shortened a bit. Overall, HOT FUZZ is an improvement over SHAUN OF THE DEAD and delivers a hilarious action movie parody that genre fans will enjoy.