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April 19, 2007

Movie Review

Get Fuzzy

Minds behind ‘Shaun of the Dead’ attack the buddy-cop genre

Story by: Anthony Williams

The Shorthorn Scene editor

Courtesy art

The local police force shows up for duty at the corner supermarket in the new film Hot Fuzz.

Okay, here’s the deal with Hot Fuzz:

If you saw Shaun of the Dead, the 2004 zombie farce from the Hot Fuzz team, you will laugh your ass off.

But if you’ve yet to see Shaun of the Dead, you’ll sit motionless for about half the film as everyone around you laughs hysterically, like I did. Because apparently, everyone else got the big picture that I missed.

It’s around the halfway point that Hot Fuzz avoids becoming another Napoleon Dynamite, a movie that people think is either hilarious or pointless. Director Edgar Wright set out to do for buddy-cop movies what Shaun of the Dead did for zombie flicks, and as the movie winds down, that becomes much more evident and funny.

After the picture was screened at the recent AFI Dallas International Film Festival, Wright said he and star Simon Pegg watched hours upon hours of movies like Bad Boys II and Point Break and hoped to finally make British policemen look as cool as the Americans. With stupid law officers, brutal murders and often corny dialogue, it’s safe to say they achieved their objective.

After the silly setup, character introductions and first few gruesome killings, Hot Fuzz almost point-for-point reenacts infamous scenes from past action movies. It even gave clueless watchers ample background, like with one particular reference to Point Break.

As far as the killings go, they are quite animated, but the squeamish should be prepared to turn their heads at times.

So Shaun of the Dead fans, go ahead and see Pegg and Nick Frost chase geese like you were already planning to. Others should take heed, but honestly, the last 40 minutes or so are worth the ticket price alone.

Creator and stars of ‘Hot Fuzz’ return with more British humor

Courtesy art

Simon Pegg stars as Sergeant Nicholas Angel in Hot Fuzz.

Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the team behind the cult classic Shaun of the Dead, have returned to put a U.K. spin on buddy-cop movies. Director Wright and acting duo Pegg and Frost were in Dallas during the inaugural AFI Dallas International Film Festival.

They answered questions from the public after Hot Fuzz was screened and attended a press roundtable the next day with The Shorthorn and local media.

The Shorthorn: Why the delay in releasing the film here in the states? (Hot Fuzz premiered this past Valentine’s Day in the U.K. and Ireland.)

Simon Pegg: Well, the distributors analyzed it, and we didn’t want it to come out here against 300. We felt like we were kind of going for the same audiences and just thought it was a battle we wouldn’t win.

TS: Simon, in Shaun of the Dead, you’re pretty much a slacker-type. Here, you’re this sort of hero. Was that switch intentional, and was it challenging?

Pegg: Yes, it was. We didn’t want people to see this as a sequel to Shaun of the Dead in any way, so that was intended. And it was a bit different.

Q: What are you working on now?

Pegg: A couple things. Nick and I are writing something that’s actually going to be shot here. It’s set in America. We had a an idea of what will be the third in our “blood and ice cream” trilogy.

Edgar Wright: I’ve got a couple of things, too — a few scripts in development. I have a trailer in Grindhouse that Simon and Nick make appearances in. That was fun.

Q: Would you make a movie of it?

Wright: My trailer’s deliberately nonsensical. It’s like one of those horror films in the ’70s where you watch the thing, and there’s like a voice-over and a marketing spin and lots of action. And you go, “I have no idea what that film’s about.”

Q: What was it like to have your own Shaun of the Dead action figures?

Pegg: When I got my 12-inch talking Shaun figure, I looked in the box behind the cellophane and remembered having the Incredible Hulk and Steve Austin. I’m very proud to be an action figure.

When we were designing the characters, we wanted Shaun to be very recognizable — the white shirt, the red tie. It’s quite an easy costume to pull off. I actually bumped into a guy in the street dressed as me once. He kind of looked at me and went, “Oh, my God!” And I looked back and went, “Oh, my God!” It was really very strange.

And then when we were in Wellington, New Zealand showing the film, Peter Jackson was introducing us. He makes a special appearance in the movie. He’s at the monastery. He stabs my hand. But he had a Shaun of the Dead shirt in his little museum of film memorabilia.

Wright: He buys things on auction sites. He got so excited to take a picture next to the shirt.

Pegg: He didn’t know if it was real or not because there are some scurrilous moneymakers on the Internet, but I was able to confirm that it was mine by recognizing my own sweat marks.