Hot Fuzz

I'm just going to come right out and say it: the Wright/Pegg/Frost filmmaking combination behind Shaun of the Dead and the new and kick-ass Hot Fuzz are the finest practictioners of film comedy currently working. Now, that's not to say that they make the funniest comedies around (though they're definitely in the top tier humor-wise), but that they make the most well-rounded comedy films around. Most American comedies are unfunny, disjointed dreck. The few humor-wizards with plus five mirth-making ability, such as Will Ferrell and Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin, the upcoming and incredibly hilarious looking Knocked Up) are great at bringing in the funny, but that's generally all they're great at. Plot, character development and camera work generally take a back seat to comic hijinx. That's why even the funniest American comedies rely on genre conventions that arrive with prefabricated plot points, like "dude on quest to get laid," "dude on quest to reunite with girlfriend" and "sports dude." In these movies, the plot is merely a spine on which to lard long scenes of improvised tomfoolery and scenes like the climactic car race in Talladegga Nights, for example, exist merely to wrap up the necessary but unenthusicatically pursued plot arc and don't connect to the comedic themes of the rest of the movie (assuming there is anything connecting the randomn silliness enough to call it a "theme").

What makes the Wright/Pegg/Frost combo so exciting and so awesome is that these comedic masterminds make complete comedies in which the plot, characters and cinematography all work together to reenforce the film's concept. This was true of the brilliant, hilarious, and brilliantly hilarious 2004 ass-kicker Shaun of the Dead, and it's even more true of the recently released and cream-dreamy action comedy Hot Fuzz. Hot Fuzz isn't a parody in the broad, literal sense of shit-sickles like Epic Movie, but rather a total immersion experience in the filmmaking tropes, character interactions, dialogue and plot devices of the American meat-head action movie. It makes the experience of watching the movie more rewarding, the jokes are richer, and when you get a sly verbal or visual reference, it makes you smile as much for it's unexpected cleverness as for the intrinsic humor. You leave the movie humming with appreciation for movie-makers who respect the material they're riffing on enough to do it justice with a fully-realized tribute, rather than a string of disconnected, if funny, gags.

Score: 9.2