Interviews. Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

"With Hot Fuzz, we're drawing attention to the formal quality of action movies by sticking it in a different context, so there is a gentle ribbing, but it's all done with a complete reverence," Simon Pegg tells Jeffrey M Anderson. This is a pretty special edition this time around. Not only do Pegg, director Edgar Wright and Nick Frost make for a fun read as they riff off each other, you can also watch them riff on, thanks to Cabinetic.

"The meta-movie silliness works well enough for the crisp setup," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "But since Mr Wright and Mr Pegg are essentially parodying self-parodies (see Con Air ad infinitum), they have also smartly kinked up their conceit by setting most of the film in a sleepy village that might as well be called Ye Old English Towne, thereby wedding one of the most irritating British exports (see Calendar Girls ad nauseam) to one of the most absurd American ones. Think of it as The Full Monty blown to smithereens."

Updated through 4/27.

"The English have a wellspring of comedy that will never be exhausted: the combination of bestial urges and excellent manners," writes David Edelstein in New York. "Hot Fuzz is fun, and it's nice to see all the English character actors who aren't busy in Harry Potter films, but it lacks its predecessor's freshness.... The ramshackle Shaun of the Dead was held together by more than just gags. It was, at heart, the story of a child-man who gets the courage to grow up—to take responsibility for his life, commit to a woman, and make peace with his mother. That he could do this and still get to blow off the top of her head with a shotgun - that's the magic of movies."

"At a running time of more than two hours, it's a wee bit lengthy," writes Robert Wilonsky in the Voice. "And yet to see it once is to fall in love and want to pay up immediately for another screening, so abundant are the poker-faced gags that race through the quaint village of Sandford in which the would-be-wannabe Bay-'n'- Bruckheimerian blockbuster is set. Hot Fuzz is a cult film writ humongous - a send-up of Hollywood spectacles that's far bigger and better than anything to which it pays homage."

"Hot Fuzz may not quite hit the same level of raucous mayhem [as Shaun]," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "But I think it's even sharper and funnier, and Wright and Pegg never run out of ideas: The movie is streaming with them, and just when you think there really can't be anything left to laugh at, a baddie holds a gun to a poor, runty redheaded kid and sneers, 'Stay back, or the ginger nut gets it!'"

"One week ago in this very space the subject was Grindhouse, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's painstakingly fetishistic, overlong ode to the trashy movies they grew up with," writes Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly. "Now we've got Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's painstakingly fetishistic, overlong ode to the trashy movies out right now. Oh well - at least this one's funnier."

In the New York Press, Armond White sees this as a comparison crying out to be made as well: "Grindhouse - a fanboy bacchanal - ignores the real world and is politically obtuse, while Hot Fuzz mixes the fine English comedy tradition of social and behavioral observation with audacious pop references."

"Hot Fuzz's basic comic strategy," as defined by Adam Nayman at the House Next Door: "the reupholstering of pop detritus into something even tackier.... And while it might sound like heresy to suggest it, Hot Fuzz is quite simply a more enjoyable (and less grueling) experience than Grindhouse. Its trashy affections come unencumbered by sky-scraping pretensions. Put simply, the two films demonstrate the difference between being tipsy on your own cleverness and irretrievably shitfaced."

Dennis Harvey at SF360: "Odd that it took some Brits to finally, definitively satirize a style that's plagued mallflicks for over two decades now - at least in a form without puppets (I will always love you best, Team America: World Police). But there you are."

"Some of the parody here is way past its due date," notes Nick Pinkerton at indieWIRE. "But keeping within what you do best - in this case, a self-deprecatingly English tweak on the blockbuster - without letting the stiffness of routine show is, by itself, an accomplishment."

Jürgen Fauth: "It takes a while for Hot Fuzz to ramp up the action, but in the meantime, the spectacular supporting cast keeps things very entertaining: Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Paddy Considine, Bill Nighy, and a slew of other familiar faces populate the town with characters that range from oddly endearing to cheerfully creepy."

"[T]he comedy is less Airplane!-style parody than a trickier, subtler mix of affectionate ribbing and fond re-creation," writes Jim Ridley in the Nashville Scene. "Cop movies, after all, are reassuring for the same reasons as cozy mysteries: they restore order."

"Although it sounds odd, Hot Fuzz is like watching a classic Agatha Christie novel stuffed into a semi-automatic weapon, and strapped to the side of some of the best comedic talent working today," writes Erik Davis at Cinematical. It's "an adrenaline-fueled, balls-to-the-wall cup of simmering tea, served up to resemble everything you love about those big-budgeted run-and-gun movies, but with enough British flavor to have this Yank itching for more."

"It is hard to parody material that is already beyond parodying," notes Neil Morris in the Independent Weekly, "so when Wright fashions an extended finale that recreates scenes from Point Break and Bad Boys II or replicates the visual gimcracks of Michael Bay and Tony Scott, it is difficult to divine where the setup ends and the punchline begins."

"Sad as it is to say," though Andrew Wright will say it anyway in the Stranger, "there're more than a few long stretches of just waiting around for a punch line."

Vadim Rizov, writing at the Reeler, finds it "disappointing only according to the high standards set by its predecessor."

But the LA CityBeat's Andy Klein finds it "every bit as funny" at Shaun.

"Whereas the US movie parodies are content to string together gags, often without so much as a segue, Wright and Pegg are storytellers who weave their naughty bits into genuine characters and a plot," notes Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times.

Shaun Brady, writing in the Philadelphia City Paper, finds it more "amiable than hilarious" but "still a worthy successor" to Shaun.

"Hot Fuzz isn't a film without problems but its charms far outweigh them," writes Canfield at Twitch.

"One of the pleasant surprises of the Hot Fuzztival was that Edgar Wright... introduced every single one of the movies that day." Jette Kernion writes up her impressions.

Cheryl Eddy has a fun talk with Wright, Penn and Frost for the San Francisco Bay Guardian blog, Pixel Vision. Keith Phipps has a similar blast at the AV Club.

Robert Abele chats with Wright and Pegg for the Los Angeles Times. More from Marc Savlov in the Austin Chronicle.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Edgar Wright "about his first forays in film, making one of the Grindhouse trailers, and why Robocop makes him cry."

Online listening tip. At IFC News, "Matt Singer and Alison Willmore discuss some of their favorite film cop clichés, from turning in your badge to seizing the cars of private citizens for official police business."

Earlier: British reviews and Nick Schager in Slant; and Sean Axmaker's interview with Pegg and Wright in 2004.

Update: "Here's just the movie for the weekend after the Va. Tech killings: a gun-love comedy about a rural town where, by the end, nearly everyone has been mowed down in a tsunami of bullets." But Time's Richard Corliss manages to catch himself: "We interrupt this rant for a review of the best, surely the smartest, English-language movie of the year to date."

Updates, 4/23: "Consider it the filmic equivalent of a bacon double cheeseburger with a big side of greasy fries," writes Jason Morehead. "It doesn't necessarily attempt to subvert or deconstruct the action genre (though there are scenes that could possibly count as such). Rather, it attempts to simply relish in the genre, to tease out and enjoy every single one of its ludicrous aspects. To that end, it's a wild success - and the fact that it also features some of the most memorable characters, some of the best dialog, and some of the funniest moments of any movie so far this year is just an added bonus."

"[T]hink of Miss Marple pulling a .44 Magnum from beneath her tweeds to waste the local curate, and you're almost there," suggests Anthony Lane in the New Yorker.

Or: "Imagine having a nice quiet dinner with Emma Thompson followed by a violent trip into the Ultimate Fighting Championship octagon with Chuck Liddell," offers Peter Hartlaub in the San Francisco Chronicle. "The movie succeeds on both levels, even if the transition is a bit abrupt."

Update, 4/24: Mike Russell has a good long talk with the trio, too.

Update, 4/25: "[F]or all the constant, if somewhat muted comedy, the feeling of the film is very... odd, because for all its humor the movie is essentially playing it straight, and not in the Dr Strangelove sense of reality being so absurd as to be comedic," writes Daniel Kasman.

Updates, 4/27: Stop Smiling gets Rusty Nails to do their Q&A.

In the London Times, Ken Russell - yes, Ken Russell - asks, "How do you sell a movie about the British constabulary in a couple of nervous lines to a board of hardheaded American businessmen?"

Posted by dwhudson at April 21, 2007 3:13 AM