SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

Based on a comic book series which uncharacteristically, I have NOT read, Edgar Wright’s third movie is the simple story of the titular Mr Pilgrim – local indie band member, ringer-T wearing, fluffy hairdo’ed hipster – who must defeat the 7 Evil Exes of his current squeeze, Ramona Flowers, if he wants to continue to woo her.

Going into this movie, I was indeed wondering if Edgar Wright could work outside of his comfort zone of a Pegg/Frost comedy vehicle? And the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is HUGELY enjoyable. It rolls more like a video game than a comic book movie, with defeated villains that turn into coins, power up’s and end of level bosses. It’s wildly imaginative and wrings every ounce of inspiration into what essentially boils down to a series of fights between Michael Cera and his various nemeses.

Displaying the usual Edgar Wright jump cut flourishes, but acknowledging it as almost a trademark of his and mucking around with it somewhat (NOTE: rewatching HOT FUZZ recently, whilst a lot more enjoyable on second view, it is a bit too kinetic and OTT with it’s jump cut montages and so on, making it hard to watch in certain places. Still overall it benefits from a second view with lower expectations), the movie is a visual party with all sorts of smart, entertaining editing and graphic devices to help get us on board with Scott and his mission.

Even as an aloof, cheating, indie hipster, Michael Cera is still essentially playing Michael Cera / George-Michael Bluth / Paulie Bleeker with a slight edge to him. I can see this is beginning to wear quite thin with a lot of folk and I can certainly understand it, but in all honesty it still works for me. I like him.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as Ramona Flowers, the object of Scott’s affections most certainly qualifies for the adjective ‘super hot’ and it’s good to see her in a decent role for once instead of being underused like in DIE HARD 4.0 and DEATH PROOF.

Jason Schwartzman, as the villan Gideon Graves, is spot on. Although he was undeniably great in RUSHMORE, Schwartzman bugs me. I find him to be kind of smarmy. He exhibits that kind of smug twattishness that he’s exuded in everything else ever since. But it’s perfect in this instance, for a playing a smug twat!!

One of the highlights for me was Brandon Routh as the vegan Evil Ex Todd Ingram. Bestowed with super telekinetic powers by virtue of his self righteous vegan-ness. The best line in the whole movie falls to him:
“You know how you only use 10% of your brain? That’s cause the other 90% is filled up with curds and whey”

Topping things off, there is an excellent small cameo from the totally underrated Thomas Jane (of The Mist, Punisher and Hung fame), as one of the vegan police officers!

Another of the many plus points about this film is that Scott Pilgrim’s band, Sex Bob-Omb are actually pretty good! But it should be pointed out at this juncture that any ‘try-hard’ band that goes out and ACTUALLY calls itself Sex Bob-Omb deserves to have their junk repeatedly slammed in successively heavy car doors, ‘fore it would be a vomitously disgusting name choice.

Still, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is undoubtedly just one big entertaining riot of a movie. The best computer game movie, not based on a computer game. I did not expect to enjoy this half as much as I did and I honestly thought it was utterly fantastic. LOVED it. Go see.

IMDB: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World