Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

There's always a danger in adapting a quirky, cultish work along the lines of Scott Pilgrim. Making a great, faithful adaptation doesn't neccessarily mean it will be a big blockbuster... and this film seems to prove the case. Whilst it's a highly enjoyable and impossibly hip film that just oozes coolness out of every colourful frame, it's still yet to even make back the money it cost to make (let alone make any kind of profit). Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who make assumptions about films before they even see them... Michael Cera can be an acquired taste (I personally think he's fantastic - certainly no less appealing or variable than a young Michael J. Fox), and the film's adherence to video game logic or sequences completely divorced from reality can come across as needlessly silly if you've only seen the trailer. Kick-Ass had similar issues - some people saw the name and the way the film was marketed and assumed it was some kind of spoof-comedy. These people missed out. If you write off Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World for similar reasons you're also missing out.

Scott Pilgrim (Cera) is bassplayer for the Canadian band Sex Bob-omb. To the shock of his bandmates he has started dating a 17 year old asian schoolgirl named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). Scott can be quite self-absorbed, and falls head over heels in love with a mysterious young woman named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), whom he starts dating. He neglects to break things off with Knives, but this is about to become a very small problem in comparison with Ramona's baggage of seven evil-exes. In order to successfully date Ramona, Scott must defeat the League of Evil Exes. Just imagine the indie rock dating scene re-envisioned as an arcade-styled fighting video game.

First of all, a lot of this film (and the graphic novels it's based on) riffs on video gaming culture - from the midi version of the Universal theme before the film starts right through to battles where dispatched enemies turn into coins. It can be quite jarring if you're not expecting it, the film starts out like a typical slacker comedy before dropping in a few left-field developments that take (no one except) the viewer by surprise. The first of these is Ramona's casual use of extra-dimensional 'subspace highways' to travel from location to location, and then it's onto Bollywood-inspired fight scenes involving super-powers and flying vampire goth girls. If you can accept this alternative reality then you will have a hell of a good time with this movie. If you can't accept this then you're probably better off watching documentaries on the History channel.

Director Edgar Wright is a little bit conscious of how subcultural the gaming stuff might come across to uneducated viewers but he's also aware that there's no point in making this film if you're going to neuter any of the reasons that make it so fun and unique. It's surprising how amazingly faithful the end result is, he captures the comics in all their ironic and post-modern glory without falling into the trap of post-90s pop culture cynicism. He also makes the gaming and indie-rock aspects obvious from the start by adding some early scenes set in a record store and a video game arcade, helping to better establish the film's ties to these subcultures. It's little unacknowledged amendments like this that make Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World such a successful translation. And by successful I mean entertaining and true to the original text, not a financial hit. As I mentioned at the start of this review, it's more than a little sad that there weren't enough people out there willing to take a chance on a film like this.


The film isn't all surface stuff either, beyond the hip references to 90s video games and hilarious visual motifs is a story about the baggage we bring to relationships and how couples can work together to deal with it. In a lot of respects Scott is quite an unsympathetic character (a lot of the film's jokes come at the expense of his short attention span or how self-absorbed he is), but the film doesn't ring hollow because it does eventually deal with this in a manner that doesn't cheat the comedy or fantasy elements. The whole thing is this metatextual metaphor for relationships that sidesteps any accusations of pretentiousness by making it's theme obvious, in your face, and a lot of fun.

Michael Cera is well-cast as Scott Pilgrim, his lanky awkwardness makes him surprisingly well suited to play an indie hipster - it's probably a character that more closely resembles his real self than the usual nerds and geeks he gets cast as. He also captures Scott's self-asborbed bastard qualities whilst still remaining endearing enough to carry the film. It's a more proactive character than we're used to seeing him play, and it's good to see him testing his range by adapting to a different genre. The rest of the cast is equally perfect... Brandon Routh and Chris Evans are hilarious as two of Ramona's exes, Kieren Culkin is an inspired piece of casting as Scott's sophisticated gay roommate Wallace Wells, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is adorably aloof as the girl of Scott's dreams.

So why should you see this movie? Well, it's chock full of awesomeness. You'll have a great time. It could've been repetitive with all the fight scenes but Wright's directon is inspired, spot on, and full of hilarious visual and editing-based trickery. This film is a true rollercoaster of comedy and action.

HIGHLIGHTS: I laughed at all the hipster vegan jokes (especially the vegan police played by underrated actors Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins Jr.) I also laughed at Gideon's digitised 8-bit pixel sword, the way the ending was structured like a video game, and Scott's self-consciousness about his hair.

DIRECTOR: Edgar Wright
WRITER/SOURCE: Written by Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall, based on the comics by Bryan Lee O'Malley.
KEY ACTORS: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Kieren Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman, Chris Evans, Alison Pill, Mae Whitman, Mark Webber, Johnny Simmons.

RELATED TEXTS:
- There are currently six graphic novels in the Scott Pilgrim series, these are: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Universe and Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour.
- There are a few similarities between this film and Michael's earlier film Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist - both feature Cera as a bassplayer in an indie band, gay best friends, a love interest with baggage and an evil ex-boyfriend who wants the girl back).