Review of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) by Movieg — 29 Sep 2010

Life is a video game, whether you think about it or not. There's always that princess we need to rescue and there are those baddies we need to defeat. And you know, it couldn't have been better said than with "Scott Pilgrim vs.

the World" This movie is awesome. Epic, even. (mind the Snagglepuss comment). What I think makes this movie work is that they portray this entire film like a video game, right from the opening "Universal" shot performed in 8-bit.

I mean it, they do the music Nintendo style. That I found to be funny. The movie starts off with Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim, even though he's playing him like Michael Cera. I'm not his biggest fan since he's played the same character in every movie from "Superbad" to "Juno".

Yet, despite this, this is his best role. He's still the meek geek, but he grows a pair and kicks ass. Anyway, he's the bassist of an indie band called "Sex Bob-omb" (just work with me) who's currently dating a 17-year old high schooler named Knives.

However, they put everything in a cross between video-game and comic book aesthetic. Anyway, while they're dating, he meets Ramona, who's sort of an indie Princess Peach. She was a damsel in distress without really being so much as a damsel in distress.

Anyway, word goes out that they're going out, and now Scott has to fight her seven ex's, which is used as an implication gag as Michael Cera keeps thinking she meant ex-boyfriends. (Let's just say she was curious.

) Anyway, he fights them, and every time they're defeated, they turn into coins and add up points like an arcade game. As the movie goes on, it turns out that Ramona isn't the only person with evil ex's.

Scott has some of his own, and they keep coming back to his life. You have a rock queen who sort of looks like Renee Zellweger, a sarcastic ginger who's the drummer in his band, of course Knives (but she's not really evil), and I don't know if she is an ex but the sarcastic girl from "Funny People".

But Scott doesn't fight them, he must fight Ramona's, which range from rock stars to ninja queens. My favorite evil ex had to be Chris Evans, who plays a skateboarder-turned-actor. He just played his character in such an awesome light that he even makes him talk like Clint Eastwood.

My least favorite is probably the vegan one, who tries to tie not eating more than just meat to being awesome. Yeah, PETA's not high on my list, but oh well. The best part about this whole movie are the video-game style fight scenes.

You actually have the Street Fighter "vs." in the middle of the two, and everything is as over the top as a video game. In fact, I saw this movie to be a "Super Mario Street Fighter" sort of thing.

Scott had to fight five guys and a girl (much like the Koopas, which also one was female) in a form of Mortal Kombat. Heck, they even did a cat fight like Mortal Kombat with a giant mallet. I'm not joking: Ramona pulls a giant war hammer out of her purse.

But my favorite part of the movie also dealt with my least favorite ex: Scott Pilgrim challenges him to a bass battle. YES. A BASS BATTLE. As a bassist, my mind was blown. In fact, the music was also pretty cool.

If you were to take away the video game look and feel, it would be a romantic comedy...probably without the comedy. So it'd be like everything else. So kudos to the director for giving us something with which we're familiar and telling it to us in a way we've never heard it.

What I didn't like is how incredibly ridiculous certain things were, even for a pseudo-video game. There's this one evil ex who makes a big deal about being a vegan that when he drinks a coffee with half-and-half, two cops of vegans take his powers out of nowhere.

Out. of. nowhere. In the end, he faces Bowser: Ramona's evil ex Jason Schwartzman. I won't tell you what happens, but the second chance card gets played like only a video game would. He doesn't have much other than he's the head of a record label, but who cares? He's the final boss.

Since I never read the graphic novels, I really don't know much about the source material, but from what I do know it seems like the movie's faithful, so if the novel is as epic as the movie was I'll consider reading it.

Bottom line: this film is awesome. It's fun, funny, great editing, cinematography, a bit ridiculous at times, but it's a video game worth playing, and you're always rooting for the hero.