After a week of unending hefting and carrying heavy things in either the office or ex-shop I had the great joy of celebrating my first Saturday off in quite a few years... and I was absolutely stumped as to what I should do! So much to do.. so little enthusiasm to do anything.

The evening was much better however when I finally got round to seeing HOT FUZZ with Owen. I must admit it wasn't as immediately enjoyable as SHAUN OF THE DEAD but it wasn't long before I was laughing out loud - so rare in a film comedy these days.

Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is a dedicated policeman whose arrest record is so staggeringly high that his superiors transfer him to the sleepy country town of Sandford. There he finds it difficult to fit in to the lazy pace of the town and the lacklustre policing but when several leading citizens die in suspicious circustances Nick realises that country life can be just as violent as in town.

Edgar Wright mines the cop-out-of-water territory for all it's worth in the first hour then goes all-out for the all-action finale with thudding machine guns, explosions, blood-splattered wounds and yes... the cops firing guns as they jump sideways in slo-mo! Simon Pegg is almost too good as the dour Angel making it hard to sympathise with him until he is 'humanised' by his friendship with his amiable well-meaning but oafish constable sidekick Danny - played of course by Nick Frost. Frost is wonderful, not over-playing the bumbling oafness and portraying Danny's wide-eyed admiration of Angel with touching sincerity.

Thanks to the success of SHAUN... Edgar Wright obviously has assembled the supporting cast of his dreams and all of them play it straight down the middle to excellent effect, a little too good in fact - I would love to have seen more of Billie Whitelaw (how good to see her on screen again!), Edward Woodward, Anne Reid, Kenneth Cranham, Peter Wight and Julia Deakin. Yep... I am making space on the shelf for the dvd already...