...hmmmm, not quite.

Rating: 4/10 (4 June 2008)

It seems I've been one of the few people on this planet who watched HF but id not (yet) see Shaun of the Dead. Maybe that's a good thing, not being drawn to this whole Pegg/Wright hype. This movie is not all bad. It just seems to be missing the point. One hour into the movie I asked myself: "What could possibly follow up now that lasts for another 55 minutes?", and the answer was simple: Nothing! While I loved the slow paced, intimate and subtly comic first part, I just hated the second splattery, action-packed, "oh-lets-parody-blockbusters"y part. The transition between the parts is so harsh, that I was thinking "What? Are you serious?" for some minutes. Guns ablaze, I finally got that that's it, this is how this story ends. Felt a lot like "KOPS", which is funny for five minutes, but then ceases to be so. I'm glad I watched HF on DVD and got something to do while watching it....
So let's go into detail. The movie starts off with a who-is-who of British comedy. I loved Pegg in Spaced, one of the reasons while I rented this movie, and in the first minutes, Martin Freeman and Steve Coogan unexpectedly show up. Wow! And then, there's Bill Bailey, the brilliant "Manny" from Black Books, and lots of other familiar faces. What can possibly go wrong? A lot! But let's see to that later. The gory scenes in the beginning are shown in unnecessary detail, but that's just my opinion, might work for others, but I think it's doing absolutely nothing for the story, the feel of the movie, or anything else. Maybe it's just a pointer to what to expect in the second half, to lower expectations, and I wish I had lowered my expectations, so I might have enjoyed the second half. The characters are being established quite well, it's a real treat to see the cop from the city trying to settle in the rural environment. Not that it's not been before, but there are some ideas that make it stand out against the rest. The relationship between the protagonist (Pegg) and his sidekick (Frost) is drawn very well, sometimes a little cheesy, but other times just brilliantly, so that's OK. A lot of stereotypes appear, but that's not so bad, as they fit well into the whole feel of the movie and just add to the atmosphere, just like props do. So what are we looking at in the second half: The revelation of the whole conspiracy is somewhat funny, but it's much more ridiculous. After having a decent story line, characters you can relate to, it abruptly lays all these burdens of decent movie-making down to become a parody - of "Bad Boys" - of the worst kind. The main characters are pressed into blocky stereotypes (and this time, the bad type). This insight does not arise from my vast knowledge of movies (I did not see any of the Bad Boys films, Michael Bay, you know...) but from the constant shoving of the DVD-Case or the Movie itself in my face during the first part. I mean, what is the point in parody, when you have to explicitly say what you are going to parody? The whole "Point Blank" thing, for example, mentioning it THAT often, even showing the original scene, is just pathetic! This is the cheapest and worst way of parody, and there's much better material on parodies out there. The finale, trying to be somewhat sentimental, just does not fit after the 40 or 50 minutes of the before mentioned style and so fails miserably.
My advice: Watch the first half, then pause, get considerably drunk, and then watch the rest, this might turn this movies into a great experience.