May be the best comedy of 2007

Rating: 7/10 (21 November 2007)

Despite a glut of critical accolades, "Shaun of the Dead" struck me as an uneven parody/homage of George Romero's zombie films--the premise was well-executed, the carnage grisly, and the laughs sort of infrequent. I don't know, perhaps it was my own bias toward a bunch of Brits sending up Romero's VERY American films (and the subsequent humor being skewed in the vein of the former) that kept the film from being all it could have been. The good news with "Hot Fuzz" is that it's not only a fine rebound from "Shaun," but possibly the best comedy of 2007. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), London's finest boy in blue, is reassigned to the small idyllic town of Standford after his superior officer claims he's making the rest of the force "look bad"; Standford comes across as a squeaky-clean village where a missing swan commands police priority, but when a string of gruesome "accidents" claim the lives of several citizens, Angel gets suspicious. Whereas "Shaun"'s setting seemed to work against it, co-writers Pegg and Edgar Wright (who also directed) strike up a balanced script that takes aim at the Michael Bay/Kathryn Bigelow school of Hollywood cop flicks ("Bad Boys II" and "Point Break" figure wonderfully into the plot), all the while acknowledging the absurdity of rapid-fire shootouts taking place in the English countryside (the last half hour is a jaw-dropping, hilarious tribute to quick-cutting and over-the-top action). The chemistry between Pegg and Nick Frost (who plays Angel's naive partner) is excellent, a comedic collaboration that grows richer with each film; and the supporting cast of British veterans is well-chosen, from Billie Whitelaw to Edward Woodward, Jim Broadbent and even former James Bond Timothy Dalton (as a shady supermarket manager, of all things). My only complaint would be an overlong run time that hurts the otherwise strong momentum, but even so, "Hot Fuzz" is a winner.