The French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard coined the phrase, "All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl." While Hot Fuzz does pack plenty of heat, it proves that to be truly funny, you don't need a girl anywhere in sight. With Fuzz, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, the co-creators of 2004's Shaun of the Dead, have once again successfully translated British humor into classic American comedy. It's taken only two movies for Wright, the director, and Pegg, the co-author, to clearly establish their own signature style, full of clever and literate wordplay and void of the meaningless jokes synonymous with most American comedy.

Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is the perfect cop, simply unmatched by anyone else in the London force. His flawless arrest record speaks for itself, perhaps a little too loudly, as Angel, by comparison, is making life quite difficult for other London cops. The solution, of course, is to send him to a place far away where the grass is green, the people are polite and there has not been a murder recorded in over 20 years. With a blue sky and a wooden sign reading "Sandford," Fuzz begins.

Angel is quickly partnered with Danny (Nicholas Frost), the obviously incompetent son of the chief of police. The workload of the lovably chubby Danny, whose extensive knowledge on the subject comes solely from repeatedly watching DVDs of Bad Boys 2 and Point Break, is based mostly around pints of beer, ice cream cones and reading magazines in the squad car.

When townsfolk start turning up dead at a seemingly alarming rate, like the rest of Sandford, Danny is quick to dismiss these events as mere accidents. Fuzz's brilliantly funny storyline begins when Angel, who can no longer live contently issuing traffic tickets all day, with the help of Danny begins to investigate and uncover these so-called "accidents."

With only two lead roles and no love interest, Fuzz is based around the evolving relationship between Nicholas and Danny. Aimed as a satire on American cop movies, Fuzz brings out every possible funny situation between the efficiently boring, technical cop and his lazy incompetent partner. While American spoofs tend simply to unoriginally mock the intended movie or genre, Fuzz could almost pass for a legitimate action cop flick.

Pegg and Wright work within-and respect-the style, but in doing so create a witty, funny semi-spoof on the guns-blasting, mystery-solving, buddy-love type of movie we've all seen time and time again. Fuzz has its touching moments, but rather than battling comedy with slow and serious scenes, it weaves both sentiment and character into its vast array of both silly and inspired jokes, exploiting clich without becoming one itself. It's both a slap and a hug to Hollywood.

All in all, Hot Fuzz is a rare, well-done comedy, and will probably end up as the funniest movie released in 2007. Fuzz will keep you laughing long enough to forget the constant British accents, and is without a doubt well worth a trip to Waltham's Embassy Cinema.

An odd fit for such an alternative theater, Fuzz is definitively a mainstream hit. Its mix of clever parody, ridiculous adults, movie references and hilariously unnecessary gruesome death scenes are reminiscent of a two hour-long episode of South Park, where anything is as believable as it is funny.