Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

I have been trying to figure out how to best tackle reviewing this movie from the moment the movie ended. For the last 10 days this movie has swirling around in the brain and marinating in my brain folds letting me soak it all in. Part action movie, part coming of age story, part comedy, part geekgasm, it is difficult to figure out how to classify it and how to talk/write about it. The movie is turning out to be a commercial failure, which, while not shocking, is absolutely disheartening, but I am not sure it was meant to be a hit. Every so often a movie comes out that I think is ahead of the times in which it was created. Scott Pilgrim is that kind of movie. People are written it off as too hipster, or too knowing, but I think that is point. I think it is so hipster, because the only way to properly mock the hipster attitude is to embrace it fully and turn it on its head. Who better for the job than Michael Cera and Edgar Wright? Okay, maybe I am getting a little ahead of myself. Let me rewind/unwind a bit and go from the start.

Scott Pilgrim(Cera) is an underachieving 20-something that spends his days playing in a band called the Sex Bob-Ombs and he is dating a high school girl, Knives(Ellen Wong) much to the mockery of his band mates, roommate (Kieren Culkin) and sister(Anna Kendrick). That all changes when he meet Ramona(Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and instantly falls in love. He has a date with Romona and the two share a bed for the night, but Scott did not break up with Knives first. However, Knives is about to be the least of his problems. In order to date Romona, Scott is going to have to do battle with and defeat her 7 evil exes. Through his battles, Scott will learn a lot about himself, about his resolve and about the people around him. Will the young man who has spent his life doing as little as possible man up and defeat the evil exes, or will the whole thing just get to be too much?

If the story is very straight forward, the way it is told is not. The movie uses elements of musicals, serious action movies, sci-fi, anime, video games, sitcoms, and a host of other avenues to get the story to the audience. It is impossible to classify the narrative framework and I could spend hours analyzing why certain things were done the way they were. I have to admit, I am ignorant to the source material as I have never read the Graphic Novel on which this is based. However, I understand perfectly, the kind of movie this is. This is the ultimate in post-post-modern genre bending film making. Edgar Wright, the genius director behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, has elevated his game and in doing so creating a movie I believe will come to be a defining film of a generation. The film is an mishmash of nerdiness, but also intrinsically cool. There are visual gags that callback to 8 bit Nintendo and each battle plays like a level of a video game, but intercut into the video game visuals is a stunningly vulnerable story.

This blending of visual with the story, make Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World play the kind of coming of Age tale high school students clamour for. Scott Pilgrim is a young man who is searching for more than just a girl, he is searching for meaning, he is searching for a way to feel something in a world that has grown cold and too ironic to understand how to feel anything. He fights a hipster Vegan with special powers(Brandon Routh), he does battle with an action star(Chris Evans) who is so detached from the world, his stunt doubles do most of his fighting. The music is also important, because in this iPod world in which we live, music is how people express themselves and this movie even uses music to be a battle, when a battle of the bands turns into a BATTLE of the bands.

Each fight is very different from the last which was welcome and the action is hard hitting, visually stunning, wonderfully choreographed and also absolutely hilarious in parts. To see Michael Cera as an action star is astonishing in its own right, but to see him do it well is just giggle inducing and I think that helps the movie. Cera is so...vanilla, that we become the character. He is so void of personality that he can become whoever we want him to be. We want him to succeed because he is us. The movie does a lot right, from all of the quick edits that can take us to 4 different locations in a matter of seconds, to the nonchalant way the movie deals with homosexuality. Scott actually shares a bed with his gay roommate and the boyfriends of his gay roommate and not a big deal is made of it.

The way relationships are dealt with is also very interesting. Romantic relationships are not treated with a great deal of respect, as these characters almost buy into the idea that we are in a post-relationship world. The gay roommate steals Scott's sister's boyfriend, Scott once had a fling with his drummer and now he treats her like it did not happen. He semi-cheated on Knives, and does not really pay the consequences at first. It is the stuff of classic Young Adult novels. It becomes a movie that could be paired with works of literature in a classroom setting, but it comes with all of these colorful bells and musical whistles that it becomes a study of both style and substance.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World might be the best movie I have seen at combining genres this side of a Tarantino flick. It has wit, heart, soul and flare, with great catchphrases to keep people reciting it, but it is so much more. I went in expecting a fun movie that would make me nostalgic for my old Nintendo and I was expecting a few cool action scenes enhanced by the video game bells and whistles, but I was not expecting for the movie to hit me the way it did. I did not expect the metaphors to be so fleshed out and the symbolism to be so effective. When the 1UP icon came up in the right hand corner, I thought it was clever, but I never expected it to be some meaningful. By the time Jason Schwartzman shows up, the movie is already amazing, but his performance and the scene in which he appears raises the movie even more.

I know I am missing things, and I know this review probably got a bit self indulgent, but it is my blog and I can write what I want. If this movie does not end up in my top 10 for the end of the year that will mean this was an insane final few months of the year.

Final Grade: A+