Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), a 20-something slacker and bassist for ‘Sex Bob-omb’ an unknown local band, falls in love with Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) the girl of his dreams… literally. Needless to say his pursuit of her doesn’t go smoothly, however it goes less smooth than expected as the moment he has eyes for her he is thrown into the crosshairs of the league of Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Based on the popular graphic novel series created by Bryan Lee O’Malley this is the fourth film by Edgar Wright. It is also his fourth film as screenwriter, collaborating this time with Michael Bacall.

Well right from the very start Scott Pilgrim vs. the World comes at its audience with incredibly charismatic charm, sharp snappy energy and an excellent frequency of genuinely funny moments, one after the other. The stylization, very much like the comic, is all about knocking the subtlety out of the story telling and getting to the point, satirising the drama of your typical love story. It does this while also homaging 8bit and 16bit eras of the video game world.

The ensemble cast is excellent. Michael Cera is not quite the Scott Pilgrim I personally saw coming to life from reading the books but he is none the less the kind of perfectly flawed, yet likable character that’s required for the role. He’s still Scott, just a different Scott. Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Ramona Flowers is even further from the version I saw in the books. In fact her performance is a little faint. Then again like in the books, she’s intended as being closed off so it’s a hard kind of character to bring across. Many of the minor characters are excellent, perfectly bringing Bryan Lee O’Malley’s world to life, but there are a few that I felt genuinely looked and sounded like they walked directly out of his head. These would be Alison Pill as Kim Pine, Mark Webber as Stephen Stills, Johnny Simmons as Young Neil and particularly Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells. The rest of the cast is still excellent but it was these chosen few that really clinched it for me.

The action scenes are the real treat of this film. Like the humor, they’re sharp, snappy and to the point and more importantly they don’t waste time, like many action and fight scenes you see today, or any other day for that matter. When they’re fake and CGI it feels suitable and when they’re real live action choreography, the same. Although they have their own sense of being episodic segments, like songs in a musical, within the film they feel very much part of the rest of the story and setting.

The only real big problem with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the story telling. For me, the script felt like it was half-way out of the books and halfway into the film. The film perfectly copies and emulates the style and content of the books without suffering from what I call snydrome*.

(*A case in which a live action movie adaptation of a comic/video game/cartoon inch for inch and word for word imitates the surface of its source material and therefore merely contains the story’s shell with none of the message.)

Its the film’s tongue in cheek approach that shows it understands the blunt witty humor of the original books so the copying of the books translates nicely. The problem is that it only really does this with the story for the first half or so. As the film progresses it comes into its own, becoming more of a “based on” than a “movie of”. The actual in-your-face references to the comic book, an example being the flashbacks being told in the form of artwork in Bryan Lee O’Malley’s style, strangely don’t effect this dynamic. It’s more the overall arc of Scott’s character that feels damaged. He starts out like in the book and ends in a different way. To me, an independent yet, similarly definitive film would have been the best way to go, but a strongly faithful adaptation would’ve worked too as Edgar Wright somehow made that work. Unfortunately instead of either you get something of an non-blending combo of both.

So, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in the end is a lot of fun. It’s bright, really funny and has a row of genuinely likable characters in a setting that really brings the books’ world to life. The overall story doesn’t quite survive the journey all the same and is somewhat needlessly trapped between both worlds. Despite this it is still a refreshingly entertaining, laugh-out-loud movie that is definitely well worth seeing. However, instead of being absolutely brilliant and something that’s its own thing, it’s just really really good… and quite brilliant.

4 out of 5

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