Scott Pilgrim VS. The World
Director: Edgar Wright
****
Scott Pilgrim VS. The World is like a pop culture hodge-podge crock-pot, which started bubbling in about 2001 and has now stewed into a gummy and satisfying meal. Part film, part comic book, part video game and part music video. Scott Pilgrim has enough tricks and visual jingly bits to keep it feeling like you are having fun from start to finish.
The film centres around a young man of the world, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera). We follow him as he navigates his way into and out of a relationship with “dream girl” Ramona. Along the way he has to fight seven of Ramona's ex-boyfriends. Cera is as impossibly lovable/likable in the lead role, bringing a surreal set of limbs to the film's several fight sequences. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is beautiful and aloof and endearingly nonplussed as Ramona. Jason Schwartzman does the neurotic narcissist bit he does so well. The cast is all around good. I liked the girl who played drums especially.
Based originally on a series of indie comic books, Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead) has done a very cracker job of transferring Pilgrim to a new medium. He manages to stay true to his source material and maintains a “comic book feel” while also exploiting the new medium (film) and all of its possibilities and capabilities. In spite of the film being chocked full of thrills and exciting bits and bobs, It never in nauseating. Good editing lead to a pretty smooth ride.
The film is very hip. Lots of garage-y music from the in-film band. I liked the music. Mostly the drums were really good. Just high energy, fuzzy bass guitar type stuff.
The only major flaw I saw in this film was that it seemed like director Wright may have gotten a little over-excited in the edit suite and paced his effects and tricks oddly. This is not to say the film doesn't carry your attention the whole way through. I just felt the start may have been a little overloaded.
Joseph Harper