Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

The words 'hotly anticipated' scarcely do justice to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Hot like the surface of the sun, maybe. Anticipated like the Jesus Christ comeback special, perhaps. Paul Martin, Angela Burton and Emma Rowley form a band to determine if Edgar Wright's latest movie is indeed a comic delight.

Paul – The folks who loiter round the soot 'n' grime encrusted corner of east London where the IndieMovies HQ is located are very cool. Well, at least in the eyes of each other they are. An interchangeable mass of '80s hair, thick-rimmed specs, cropped trews, no socks and espadrilles; their lives are spent accumulating points in the League of the Agonisingly Hip. Yet were you to extract any one of them from their regular haunts, and the safety provided by the like-minded, and that painstakingly constructed coolness would be largely neutralised, thanks to a dearth of observers with the correct reference points at their fingertips with which to acclaim their stylistic choices.

You feel a similar fate is in-store for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; it being a cult movie that has been dressed up as a studio tentpole release. A postmodern wisenheimer dragged out of context and left exposed on the mean streets of the mainstream. Some viewers will goggle at the freewheeling abandon displayed by director Edgar Wright in such off-the-wall sequences as Matthew Patel's freaky aerial dance routine and the bass guitar face-off between Scott and cataclysmic douchebag Todd Ingram. But the majority of cinema-goers, those not immersed in the world of comic books and video games, will shrug, feeling as bewildered as they did when Dr. Manhattan's bright blue cock 'n' balls schlepped across the screen in Watchmen.

Having said that, for the geek-inclined there is indeed plenty here to geek out over. While some references from the Bryan Lee O'Malley source books are simply allowed to drift by – Todd's Akira-style destruction of the moon, told in comic book form as all flashbacks to Ramona's past are; Scott's X-Men insignia on his parka (were Universal sniffy about allowing mention of a rival studio's franchise?) – Wright adds plenty of his own neat li'l touches, with my personal fave being the deployment of the Ming the Merciless sound effect from Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon when Gideon kisses Ramona's ring (literally. That's not a mucky euphemism).

Speaking of 'the G-Man', he makes for a decent arch-nemesis, the major label sell-out to Scott's ramshackle indie kid. Played as the ultimate glib phoney by Jason Schwartzman, you can almost imagine the character as a future peek at the same actor's Max Fischer, had the latter finally got to hang out with the scenesters following his high school tribulations in Rushmore.

Scott Pilgrim is certainly a suitable vehicle for the now-familiarly frenetic style of Wright, although that boundless energy sometimes threatens to become overwhelming. Seven evil exes might have worked over six graphic novels but it makes for a stiflingly crowded movie narrative, with the fact that there are still four gitsacks to overcome after Todd has been defeated stoking your sense of weariness rather than anticipation.

The characters are, for the most part, well-defined. However the relentless action threatens to engulf the emotional core of the piece. For while the bond between Knives Chau and Scott is crisply illustrated, there is far less of a palpable sense of what he and Ramona share, aside from her desire to date a nice boy after all those narcissistic maniacs.

Rating on a scale of seven medieval hexes: 3

Angela – Perhaps you need to have grown up with a childhood filled with videogames, and to have reserved a special place in your heart for TV shows that utilise comics effects like Batman and Robin to truly appreciate what Edgar Wright was trying to do here. If you’ve no love for videogames perhaps you should just give this one a miss, as you probably won’t find the references funny. Luckily for me, I sit in the former category. Needless to say I rather enjoyed it.

Having love for Bryan Lee O'Malley's comics series on which this film is based will get you started on the right foot here too. It becomes quickly apparent that the comic book feel and style works well on the screen with the same character and scene descriptions in simple black boxes, as well as the onomatopoeic words scrawled across the screen.

The seven evil exes (and thus seven evil battles) got a bit wearing at times, most notably Scott's fights with Lucas Lee and Todd Ingram. Some of the other exes were weaker on the page (Roxanne Richter, Kyle and Ken K) so they were kept short and sweet in the movie, but these two seemed to have been given extra screen time – perhaps because Chris Evans and Brandon Routh are not only big names but the actors behind Captian America and Superman – which meant their scenes dragged a bit. Or perhaps it was that they paled in comparison with the slightly shocking fight (in a good, funny way) with first evil ex, Matthew Patel.

Anna Kendrick did fine work in The Twilight Saga and Up in the Air, but in Scott Pilgrim? Not so much. Not only that but the character of Stacey Pilgrim was altered for the film; rather than the comic's sensible younger sister embarrassed by her older brother, she became a super-annoying gossip who knows better than anyone. Ergh.

The role played by Scott’s ex-girlfriend, Envy Adams was minimised, which at first seemed a bit of a shame. She was quite a fun, ruthless character who went through her own trials and tribulations. On screen however, Brie Larson played too heavily on her sexiness, becoming all about the pouty lips.

On the flip side, the characterisation of Knives Chau was much better than expected. Her role seemed to have been expanded for the flick. Her love for Scott (and his band) is one of the most convincing elements of the film, even to the point that it challenged the key love story between Scott and Ramona.

Overall the soundtrack was great (a little too great as far as Sex Bob-omb goes; their songs were written by Beck), the effects were really well done, the jokes were funny – the little nods here, there and everywhere to all things geeky was enough to put a smile on any nerd's face (including myself). It was imaginative and inventive but ultimately the fact that there’s nothing else out there like it won this reviewer over.

Rating on a scale of 5 different hair colours in 112 minutes: 4

Emma – Q: How many hipsters does it take to change a light bulb? A: Oh, it’s a really obscure number. You’ve probably never heard of it.

You can forgive a film many things if it makes you laugh and for this reviewer, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is perhaps the funniest film of the year. (Having said that, it’s difficult to think of many other side-splitting flicks 2010 has offered up.) The central love story is wispy, the character development is flimsy and the fight sequences grow increasingly wearying. Nonetheless, SPVTW is like a big vegan shepherd’s pie: while some of its ingredients are as unpalatable as soy margarine, the overall mix is surprisingly delicious.

Fans of Edgar Wright can kick of their shoes and get comfy on the shared bed: you know what to expect. Wright is like a mythic monster: half-man, half-editor. And SPVTW has more cuts than the rest of his films combined (I exaggerate, but only a bit). Something is only on the screen long enough for your brain to vaguely identify it before it’s gone again, leaving a Wile E Coyote dust-cloud behind. With this material, the frenetic editing works brilliantly. Apatow and Rogen, for example, insist we commiserate with their whiny geeks and jobless, love-struck losers. Wright makes no such demands on his audience, thank goodness. Scott is an idiot, the details of his life are inconsequential and the interests of his friends are ephemeral. And that’s the secret to the film’s likeability.

Edgar Wright’s movies are framed as love stories of the more (Shaun of the Dead) or less (Hot Fuzz) conventional kinds. But although he’s nicked its scaffolding, romance itself gets short shrift in favour of romantic/buddy bonding through fighting. Not just any fights, however, but really bloody cool ones that reference music, movies and more, like a Queen-soundtracked pool cue attack on a pub landlord turned zombie; or a full-scale skirmish with a village full of OAPs; or in the case of Scott Pilgrim, a battle of the bands in which the music each group produces mutates into fighting sound monsters (which themselves reference classic arcade games: the evil twins’ Double Dragon versus Sex Bob-Omb’s Donkey Kong).

While we might come out of the flick no wiser as to what Scott sees in Ramona or Ramona sees in Scott, the real love story in this film – as in all of Wright’s flicks so far, as well as his sitcom Spaced – is between his audience and pop culture. As Knives would say: we heart it. Nice of Wright to remind us why.

Rating on a scale of 5 levels of door security to KO before the big boss: 4

Release date: US= 13 August 2010; UK= 25 August 2010
Directed by: Edgar Wright
Screenplay by: Edgar Wright, Michael Bacall, based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Cast: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong, Alison Pill, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Brie Larson, Satya Bhabha
Rating: US = R; UK = 15
Running time: 112 minutes

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