I first learnt about this film due it Empire magazine’s extensive coverage of Scott Pilgrim in the months leading up to its release. On paper it looked like a dream combination of ingredients for someone like me. Edgar Wright is the genius director behind the comedic gems that are Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead and TV’s Spaced. Michael Cera is legendary in most of his movies (even though he’s Canadian), and has been one of my favourite actors since TV’s Arrested Development. The film is based on Bryan Lee O'Malley low budget comic book series about a slacker Canadian musician. As far as I was concerned the makings of a movie that could creep into my all time top 20 were all there – and Scott Pilgrim delivered with a bang.
The visual style of the film is incredible. I have to give the makers of the movie a lot of credit, as the creativity and attention to detail is very impressive. It’s one of the most innovative ways to combine comic books, video games and movies in one package, and it looks like a fever dream of a man brought up on Atari video games and Japanese comics. This adds to the overall absurdity of the story and the characters, and creates a absolute visual treat.
The story itself is very simple and involves our protagonist Scott attempting to date a mysterious American delivery girl Ramona. The catch here is that in order to do this he needs to defeat her 7 evil exes, while avoiding his crazy Chinese ex-girlfriend Knives Chau and trying to win the Battle of the Bands with his band, Sex Bob-omb. Michael Cera does a great job channelling his usual nerdy, awkward character and it works really well here – I doubt anyone else could have made this part work as well. The supporting cast all deliver credible performances, with Kieran Culkin as Scott’s gay roommate and (academy award nominee) Anna Kendrick as Scott’s sister to name but a few. The exes are also great, even though their appearances are fairly brief in the movie. Jason Schwarzman, Chris Evans and Brandon Routh stand out as the more exciting cameos in the film.
This is a bit of a spoiler alert, but one thing did bug me about the story in this film. The character of Knives Chau gets shafted (metaphorically) pretty hard by Scott in this film, and I think she really gets the wrong end of the stick. Essentially Scott starts dating her, then double times on her with Ramona, doesn’t bother properly breaking up with her, and through all of this she goes to all his band’s shows and ends up fighting alongside Scott to defeat one of the evil exes. And what does she get in return? Nothing! I think her character should have either been more crazy and irrational, or not got the kind of treatment she received.
The bottom line is - If you like video games and/or comic books, and appreciate the works of Edgar Wright and Michael Cera, you should not miss this movie under any circumstances. However I can see someone not raised on videogames and lacking appreciation for slightly offbeat comedy not loving this as much as I did. For me, this was one of the best comedies of the year.
Rating 5/5
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