"Hot Fuzz"

It may have been out since Valentine's Day, but I finally bothered to watch "Hot Fuzz" at the weekend. And after a promising start of tight dialogue, witty one-liners, well-strung montages and a zillion cameos... after 15 minutes, I started watching the clock.

I struggle with Pegg a bit. I mean, yes, he's a funny guy and he's doing a lot for British cinema in the international arena (ooh)... and clearly he's got a lot of luvvy mates... but he's also smug to a degree that must surely hurt internally. The other problem is that I used to share a flat with his sister, so I've met him many times and found him to be two things: 1) smug and 2) determined to be Funny-At-All-Costs, even if it meant drowning out everyone else until they were all listening to him. (I also recall an unintentionally amusing incident when he turned up in Kensal Green in a flashy red sports car... but I won't go in to that now.)

So the problem with Pegg is that he creates these roles for himself where he gets to play an everyday hero who saves the world. Pegg likes to think he's doing it with an ironic sense of parody. But what it really comes across as is a comic-loving geek who struck lucky and is writing himself a wannabe-sexy hero role, who may not get the girl but is still the envy of all the lowly men who populate his false existence. It's very much a boy's own adventure story. (Not to be confused with a Boyzone adventure story).

Oh, and "Hot Fuzz"? A cocky policeman turns up in Somerset, gets bored, watches "Point Break" with fatty Frost, catches a swan and tries to arrest James Bond (the crap Bond mind you, Timothy Dalton). On the plus side, it provides an opportunity for his mates (including, deep breath, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Olivia Colman, Billie Whitelaw, Edward Woodward, Bill Baily, Stephen Merchant, Steve Coogan, uncle Jim Broadbent, old Tom Cobley and all) to show their faces. On the downside, I've now lost all respect I ever had for Paddy Considine - previously one of my favourite British actors. Why, Paddy, why?