Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Film review)

OK folks, confession time; I had never heard of Scott Pilgrim until earlier this year. Now I know a lot of you will be shocked and appalled by this development and realise that I have no journalistic integrity to review a movie based on a hugely successful comic franchise built upon decades of development with no knowledge of the source material but alas, work with me, I'm only human!

Translated from sarcasm:

Like you, I had never heard of Scott Pilgrim until Michael Cera and Edgar Wright's names appeared in the original teaser trailers several months ago but I was intrigued by the prospect and wanted to know more. Afterall, I'm one of only say, eight people who can still tolerate Cera playing the same character for the past five years and like many of you, I think Edgar Wright is an underrated genius for his previous definitions of cult classics Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

So when I discovered the film was an adaptation on an American faux-manga which was pretty much a love letter to video-games (mainly from Nintendo and Sega's first two home consoles), well, I was engulfed in the hype. It looked and sounded amazing from the trailers and further advertisements of a faux-8bit console game based on the manga for the PS3 and Xbox 360 (with hopefully a review on that soonish).

So August has shown it's sunny face on the calendar year, the film tanked at the American box-office for having the balls to face off against The Expendables but I remained hyped as hell for this thing. Surely something has to give, only The Dark Knight has ever lived up to it's level of anticipation and that was The Godfather of comic book movies.

So, is it good? In a nutshell, yes.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is at it's core a rom-com. The story from which is six volumes long and has taken as many years to complete is the story of it's titular character, a twenty-two year old inhabitant of Toronto who is the very definition of no-hoper.

Scott (played by Michael Cera) has no real ambitions, no real job (minus being the bass player in garage band Sex Bob-omb) and lives with in a one bedroom apartment with his absolutely fantastic roommate Wallace Wells (played by Kieran Culkin).

After being brutally dumped by his girlfriend, he finds himself in a surreal relationship with seventeen year-old high schooler Knives Chau (played by Ellen Wong) which his friends and bandmates object to. One day while dreaming, a purple hair girl catches his eye who eventually turns out to be a real person called Ramona Flowers (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstrad) an Amazon delivery girl who ends up being the figurative girl of his dreams.

However, Ramona comes with baggage in the form of seven evil ex's who Scott must defeat in video-game style fashion to stay alive long enough to keep dating her.

That's the film; there's twists, there's turns, there's small pop up boxes for extra character notes/lulz but again, in it's purest form, it's a boy meets girl story.

What makes Scott Pilgrim vs. The World a far more entertaining rom-com then say, anything Jennifer Aniston has starred in for the past decade is that the film is pure fun from start to finish. Despite the absolute insanity of guy having to physically destroy seven people in order to get to third base (or possibly 2nd & 1/2 base as Wallace advises), the film's universe and characters are a fantastic, memorable bunch and are all well developed.

You can mostly thank Bryan Lee O'Malley's original story for this but credit has to go to Wright and screenwriter Michael Bacall for condensing a six volume story into a two hour film. Yes for purists of the original story, things are obviously trimmed or omitted completely, but the main story remains.

One of my only gripes of the film is that the latter half of evil ex's seemed rushed compared to the first three but I put that down Wright and Bacall having more time to work on them as they were the older volumes but to be honest, Brandon Routh peaks as the best evil ex with Jason Schwartzman and Chris Evans behind, but minus the twins, they're all memorable villains.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World also holds the accolade of being the most quotable film of the year by far. A pre-warning, you might wanna get on IMDB after seeing this one, a few of the phrases are going to be popping up in conversations for years to come.

So, it sounds like a treat, but what about the look. Simply put I have never seen a picture like this. Sure, it's neon bright for the action sequences and picturesque for the more quieter scenes (like Scott and Ramona's first "date") and yes, after three television series and two films, everyone is used to Wright's frantic pace of cuts and cues but, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a close as any comic book based property will ever get to looking like a live action comic (without it being completely animated).

Visual puns, contradictory text boxes, narrations, exaggerations, the whole works is up on the big screen and it works a treat. Compared to our modern day fad of media being real and gritty, Scott Pilgrim's universe is the complete antithesis and it's an absolute gem because of it.

If you've ever listened to Beck or any form of garage rock regardless of how terrible it is, you'll be wanting to get the soundtrack afterwards too. Whereas the film looks colourful and vibrant, the music is stereotypically messy and at times, hilariously simplistic.

Beck's take of Ramona, Scott's song he wrote for...Ramona sounds like a b-side off of Sea Change for anyone who likes Beck but the rest of the music is slow acoustics for drama, chiptunes for battles and garage rock for band battles, which is fine for me.

So afterall all this, where does this leave Scott Pilgrim vs. The World? Earlier this year, it looked different, but in a good way. After being sucked into the hype and seeing the adventures of this twenty-two year old Canadian slacker and his crazy cast of friends and enemies, I can safely say;

If you grew up with video-games of the early ninities or want a zanny rom-com, it's the most fun you'll have in the cinema all year and I'm in lesbians with it.

9/10

H