High-Flying Scott Pilgrim a Joyous Battle Royale
Toronto native Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) has a thing for blue-haired eccentric Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). There’s something about her he’s just dawn to, and although he’s currently dating High School student Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) he’s more than willing to throw her aside in order to get close to this new girl that’s much closer to his age and far more to his liking.
Michael Cera and Jason Schwartzman in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World © Universal Pictures
But in order to date Ramona, Scott must do battle with her seven evil exes. It’s a battle royale that some would call a full-on Super Street Fighter, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Brothers cavalcade of righteous carnage. But is the girl worthy? Does she feel the same for him as he does for her? Can he defeat all seven? Will Knives be able to survive the break-up? Scott isn’t so sure on any of those counts. But Ramona has got something going on and he wants to be with her, and if the League of Evil Exes wants to stop him they better bring their “A” game because this potential future ex has definitely come to play.
I just started reading Bryan Lee O'Malley’s series of graphic novels on which Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World are based and they are, in a word, incredible. That said, before I’d walked into the screening of this film version I hadn’t even touched a single one of them, and not knowing a thing about the project other than it played within the world of video games in a romantic comedy context I had little to no idea as to what to expect.
Other than the fact the picture is a wee bit too long (it’s almost two hours), the truth of the matter is I had a great time watching it. It’s wildly inventive, hugely energetic and remarkably funny for the majority of its running time. It plays with pop culture in a way I wasn’t quite prepared for, and while some of the more idiosyncratic video game allusions will undoubtedly fly over the head of viewers over the age of say 40 the film still offers up so many copious delights I severely doubt the majority will care.
Where Wright and his co-writer Michael Bacall (Manic) get things right is by making sure that no matter how outlandish or as nonsensical things might become it is the core relationships between Scott, Ramona, his sister Stacy (Anna Kendrick) and the rest of his friends that must always take center stage. If you don’t believe in Scott you don’t believe in what’s happening to him. If you don’t buy he’s falling for Ramona than you won’t be willing to accept Chris Evans as one of her skateboarding exes or Brandon Routh as a bass playing lothario with Vegan superpowers.
I did buy their relationship, hook, line and sinker. I felt like I could see Scott falling for the freewheeling eccentric, that this girl was captivating him to a point that it no longer mattered whether or not they held any similar likes or dislikes. I bought into the fact that his friend and roommate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin) would happily make him look like an idiot while at the same time offer up sage advice others would fear to say. And, most of all, I believed that Scott would be willing to take on the world, even a brokenhearted Knives if he has to, in order to find love and repair a heart wounded by a past affair.
By making sure the emotional relationships are grounded, no matter how extreme, silly or outlandish the rest of it all gets the central cast is relatable and believable no matter what. Wright and Bacall break the rules and have a blast doing it yet they both seem to understand that in the end it is the people, not the fight sequences, no the music, not bug-eyed craziness, that matters most at the end of the day.
I will say that having to sit through six battles (one set of exes come as a pre-packaged audio-phonic pair) did wear on me a little bit, and no matter how different and distinct all of them are there is still that slight been there-done that sense that can’t help but grow a little bit old. Like all of Wright’s films this one, too, does feel a tiny bit overlong, part of me wishing the director would spend a little more time in the editing room tightening things up.
These are a relatively small matter, however, as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is one heck of a lot of fun. Everyone in it, notably Cera, Routh, Culkin, Alison Pill (as one of Scott’s band mates) and especially Jason Schwartzman (as the record executive behind the evil exes), are fantastic, while the collections of original songs (a lot of them written by Beck) played by the various bands in the film are simply out of this world. This movie has its own style and its own rhythm both of which are incredibly easy to dance to, Wright crafting one of the year’s most effervescent romantic comedy gaming experiences I’m quite positive audiences will want to keep playing long into the night and way into the foreseeable future.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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