The art of the spoof is difficult to achieve. In America, there's “the guys” that bring us yearly instalments of Scary Movie and the genre hodge-podge pictures like Date Movie and Epic Movie and while these movies can be funny, I would not call them artful. This is where Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright come in. They use age old techniques of plot, story and character to enrich their spoof films and make them well-rounded comedic pictures and not just a bunch of outtake gags sewn together like some kind of cinematic Frankenstein. It worked with the George A. Romero catalogue in Shaun of the Dead and it works quite nearly as well with Hot Fuzz, a send-up of Hollywood action pictures in the style of the work of Joel Silver and Jerry Bruckheimer.



Co-writer Pegg stars as Nicholas Angel, London's absolute best cop on the force (or 'service' if you will as 'force' has negative connotations). With an arrest record 400 per cent better than the nominal rates, Angel's superiors eagerly and enthusiastically transfer him out of London to the quiet village of Sandford. In Sandford, Angel must contend with loitering youths, escaped swans and a partner who's only seen action through the laser lense that reads his favourite DVDs like Point Break and Bad Boys II (he's played by Pegg's Shaun co-pilot Nick Frost). But there's something odd in Sandford and when people start dying in what appears to be unfortunate “accidents”, Angel thinks there's something more to these deaths, and he'll find out what it is no matter how much ridicule he has to take from his colleagues for his apparent overzelousness.



The thing of it is that if Hot Fuzz weren't a send-up of big, dumb American action movies, it'd be a very funny, very satisfying movie in its own right. It works because of the way Pegg and director Wright play the concept against the setting, the sight of British bobbies jumping through the air, firing a gun in each hand in the centre of town in a quiet English hamlet is funny on so many levels. Pegg playing it straight-faced anchors the whole thing but he's backed up well by Frost, Jim Broadbent as his boss, Timothy Dalton as a moustache-twirling villain, and a few smart celebrity cameos. Wright cheekily uses the tools of the action movie against it, with a lot of quick cut editing and over-the-top violence. There are times where Hot Fuzz becomes the very thing it's spoofing, a little like Shaun of the Dead and its zombie violence, but Hot Fuzz never gives itself over in the same way its predecessor did.



As a comedy, Hot Fuzz is brilliant. as a comedic parody it is beyond brilliant, with elements of genius. I don't think it’s quite as fearless as Shaun of the Dead, but comedy of this calibre is hard enough to find without attaching caveats and addendums to the proceedings. Pegg and Wright obviously have a winning formula here and I hope they continue with the spoof-making for years to come.