Hot Fuzz is the sophomore effort from the team that brought us Shaun of the Dead a few years back. This time around they've set their sights on cop films, action films, and British murder mysteries. The results, unfortunately, are much more scattershot and, dare I say it, duller than their previous cult classic. The reason Shaun of the Dead worked so well was because all involved clearly loved zombie films dearly, and as a result they crafted something that was very funny, but also startlingly touching. It worked as a comedy, a zombie film, and a character drama (I'd argue that Shaun's scene with his mother in the pub was more moving than just about anything you'd find in that year's best picture winner Million Dollar Baby). Fuzz, on the other hand, elicits too few laughs, tries to be three genres of film at once, and has far too many characters for you to really care about any of them. They aimed for the moon and fell short.Simon Pegg plays Nick Angel, the best cop on the London force. He's so good, in fact, that he makes everyone else look bad by comparison, so his superiors send him to the safest town in the country: Sandford. There he meets a plethora of characters, including the chief inspector, the local reverend, the owner of the supermarket, and the inspector's dimwitted son Danny (Nick Frost). The first half of the film is devoted to getting to know the town, its inhabitants, and the silly kinds of jobs the police are expected to do in the safest town in the country—there is a running joke of the missing goose that they're always on the lookout for. It's not until about halfway through the movie that the murders start happening and Angel has to convince everyone that they aren't just accidents.
As a comedy film there are surprisingly few jokes. For long stretches of time I didn't so much as chuckle. The aforementioned running joke with the goose is really not funny in the least and amounts to little more than them seeing the goose at inopportune times. This also is not a movie you're likely to be quoting to your friends afterwards, as there were not really any great one-liners. There are some jokes at the expense of popular action films that work well, notably a clever spoof of Point Break. Perhaps the biggest laughs come from the violence in the film, which surprisingly gets far gorier than almost anything you saw in Shaun. It also didn't work as an action film as most of the film is devoid of action, and when it does turn into an action flick it is surprisingly boring. There's no sense of danger and the shootouts lack any creativity. Perhaps I would have been more involved in the action had I been invested in any of the characters. With upwards of a dozen characters, all of which make an appearance during the final showdown between hero and villain, we spend very little time with any of them during the run time. Even the two leads have a rather undefined relationship. Angel is dubious of Danny, and we never seem to get a crucial turning point where he realizes he was wrong about Danny. It just seems to suddenly happen when the plot needs it to.
Sadly, Hot Fuzz is largely forgettable. Over time Shaun of the Dead has continued to grow on me and I appreciate it more as it ages, a trait common to only the greatest of comedies. I hope that this film proves me wrong in the long run and it grows as well. But really there was just too much ground covered here and not enough comedy to make you ignore all the exposition. It's not a bad movie at all, just an unexpectedly bland one.
