Simon Pegg plays Gary King, the world's oldest adolescent. He seeks to conquer The Golden Mile, an epic 12-stop pub crawl in his former hometown of Newton Haven, and he seeks to conquer it with his childhood friends: Andy Knightley, played by Nick Frost; Steven Prince, played by Paddy Considine; Oliver Chamberlain, played by Martin Freeman; and Peter Page, played by Eddie Marsan.
While his friends are all leading successful adult lives in London, Gary is still the same irresponsible plonker he was at school. They all enjoy seeing each other again, but they grow tired of Gary's antics very quickly (Especially Andy, who wants nothing to do with Gary after an accident 16 years earlier). This changes when they discover that Newton Haven has been invaded by aliens who have replaced the people with androids. Not wanting to arouse suspicion, they decide to carry on with the crawl.
Wait, what?
OK, it's not the best premise. And a lot of people weren't so keen on the role reversal, with Simon Pegg playing the man-child while Nick Frost is more responsible. I suppose it makes a nice change. But then again, Shaun was a man-child character in the first film, but it's different here. And their interactions are still great, along with the other characters. Rosamund Pike appears as Oliver's sister Sam, with whom Gary and Steven competed for affections. Other one-scene wonders include David Bradley as the conspiracy theorist Mad Basil, and Pierce Brosnan as the boys' old schoolmaster Mr Shepherd.
I'd also like to point out that this is certainly the darkest film in the trilogy, with some truly dramatic moments. I can't really say much about that without spoiling it though. Gary tends to blather, but Andy always delivers some snarky comebacks. I guess they wanted to create a different dynamic to avoid becoming formulaic.
Overall, it's not the best film in the series, but it's still worth a couple of viewings.
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