The overly theatric fight scenes, original music, helplessly awkward characters, jokes that fly over your head the first 7 viewings, and the endless attention to detail. These factors must be done well, or they become tacky. This high-risk film style that Edgar Wright follows is very easy to fail, but if done well it would be a masterpiece.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is directed by Edgar Wright and loosely based off the popular graphic novel series of the same name created by Bryan Lee O’Malley. The film follows Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), a dead beat who relies on the people around him to get by in life. Living in his parent’s basement, well a little bunker across the street from his parent’s basement.
Scott is the unemployed slacker archetype. The only thing he has going for him is his band called The Sex Bob-ombs and being able to mooch off his roommate Walace Wells (Kieran Culkin).
They enter into the battle of the bands. This is a great staging strategy as each battle feels like a new level in a video game. Which fits the movie amazingly.
Scott is dating Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) but runs into problems when he starts dreaming of another girl. It turns out the girl he’s been dreaming of hasn’t just been in his head. Her name is Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) Scott gets to know her, in a very awkward Michael Cera kind of way. If he wants to be with Ramona, he must defeat her seven evil exes.
While he works his way down the list of evil exes, he ends up fighting a semi-famous actor and semi-famous skater Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), a nationally known bass player and vegan Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh) and a world-renowned chaotic club owner Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman) and many more, four to be exact.
This film uses fast and witty dialogue to reference pop culture, video games, movies and music helping to convey the story of Scott Pilgrim fighting for his love (Literally) and build the world. The pacing in this film is snappy every one of the 113 minutes seems to slip by. The strategy of making the movie progress like a video game is so clever, it keeps you begging for more.
Each time you watch the film you will see new things. This kind of detail is impressive and very entertaining.
The cast is perfect for the role, yep, no Jack Black here. Michael Cera might have been type cast as the quirky love interest, but to me that adds to film.
The way the film takes ideas from the graphic novels makes it a standout film. Since the movie’s release it has been a cult classic. It is a perfectly original young love story set in a larger-than-life fantasy world.
This movie is almost perfect from the casting, the originality, the passion, the humor, I could keep going but you get the idea. Every second in this movie gives you something to think about or laugh at. This film has no boring down time or epilogue. It’s a fun movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously but also doesn’t parody itself.
Buzz Scale: 10/10
