Hot Fuzz is one of the funniest movies that I have seen in a long time- and one of the best. It has more pure laughs than even Borat or Clerks II and is a little sweeter, in both senses of the word, than both of those films. If you have ever had to sit through a dumb action film, you will find Hot Fuzz to be massively entertaining.
The movie is directed by Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg, both of whom co-wrote the script and previously collaborated on Shaun of the Dead, which I haven't seen but you can sure bet I am planning to now. The story concerns police Sgt. Nicholas Angel (Pegg) who is the best and most bad-ass officer on the London force. How good is he? He's so good he makes the rest of the force look bad, so they ship him off to the small shire of Sandford, where things seem to be sort of like a British version of the Andy Griffith Show town. The police force is easy going and not very competent, mainly because there's not much crime. Of course, Angel quickly discovers an insidious plot that might be out of a Hammer horror film.
The movie entertainingly goes through the obligatory series of cop movie clichés- Angel quickly clashes with his partner, Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) but they develop a Leathal Weapon like bond. There's the scene where all seems lost and the hero is about ready to give up, but has a sudden bit of inspiration, the surprise plot twist that's not a surprise at all, the cheesy epilogue, the obligatory scene with the hero's ex-girlfriend (a major star in a hidden and uncredited cameo), the prologue designed to show how bad-ass the hero is, the borderline homosexual bonding scene…in fact, looking back on the film, virtually every scene in the movie is a parody of a cliché. Although the movie is obviously a parody, it never develops an Airplane! like coldness. The friendship between Angel and Butterman is actually rather touching after a while, and the movie's satire never becomes mean spirited.
In addition to the many real laughs the movie has, I think it also poses some interesting questions about American popular culture. Why do so many American films present a fantasy world of glorified violence with no consequences? After a week of non-stop news coverage of the Virginia Tech slaughter it was interesting to see a film that asks this question without being heavy handed. Regardless, Hot Fuzz is an instant classic, and I am sure that it will be on my ten best list at the end of the year.
Hot Fuzz (2007)