Being Britain's most successful comedy export means that Simon Pegg is a very busy man. This year he will be starring in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot, sci-fi road comedy 'Paul' that he also wrote, he has leant his voice to the third instalment of the Ice Age franchise, he has already begun work on the Steven Spielberg produced Tintin movie and somehow he plans to squeeze in the writing of a whole other movie with comedy cohort Edgar Wright called 'The World's End'. At least that is according to an interview Pegg had with Entertainment Weekly.
Pegg also tells EW he's stepping into his first Fourth of July weekend in the threequel Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs as Buck, "a slightly unhinged, swashbuckling weasel." For the new film from animation house Blue Sky, Manny the Woolly Mammoth (Ray Romano) and company stumble into a special, subterranean cave where dinosaurs still roam. "[Buck] is the only mammal in this prehistoric world," explains Pegg (pictured, recording the role). "He had an altercation with this dinosaur he calls Rudy, in which [Buck] lost an eye, but took a tooth. So they have this Ahab/Moby Dick thing going on. He has perfectly lost his mind, because he's been down there for so long. It's always fun to play a loony."
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This June, Pegg and Frost will team up with director Greg Mottola (Superbad) for Paul, a comedy the actors and avowed "heterosexual life partners" wrote together. "It's about two British comic-book geeks having a little holiday road trip in America," says Pegg. "They end up meeting an alien, called Paul. It's a very intellectual treatise on identity in America -- and aliens."
Finally, this fall, Pegg says he hopes to reteam with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright on another of their genre-bending films, tentatively titled The World's End. "If Shaun of the Dead was about leaving your 30s and taking responsibility," says Pegg, "and Hot Fuzz was about being a man, then the next one will be about being an old man," Pegg bursts out laughing, "being f---ing 40, which I am approaching. Edgar isn't, the little bastard."
It's difficult for me to be critical of Simon Pegg's work since I have been a fan of his since the hit-and-miss late 90s sketch show 'Big Train' and his pop-culture whirlwind sitcom 'Spaced'. So the question I put to the more objective among you is whether you think Pegg is still funny, or has he become too ubiquitous too soon? I can see a Pegg backlash coming at any moment as so often happens when comedians become over-exposed like this. Personally I will give anything he does the benefit of the doubt until I see it, a fair criticism of Ricky Gervais' comedy is that he essentially plays himself in everything he does, hopefully the roles Pegg takes will be diverse enough that people won't get too sick of him.
Source:
EW via
Aintitcool
August 17, 2008, 01:23:55 AM
