Review of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) by Luke C — 14 Feb 2013

Movie comedies about teenagers. You either love them or hate them. I think it depends on whether adolescents either doing the dirty, getting intoxicated or smoking dope are your kind of thing. Also, the raunchiness and the foul language that normally comes with them can get wearisome after a while. The ones that don't go the usual route like 2004's Dude, Where's My Car? and Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies are amusing in their own way but at the same time, they feel past it, like products of a bygone era and lack that much-needed zest to keep them fresh and newly baked from the Hollywood oven. The 80's is the period when they all started and felt like the beginnings of a new era for teen comedies, especially from the pen of the late John Hughes like The Breakfast Club but then before and after the Wayne's World and American Pie series (a franchise I could never get to grips with), the genre started to become...to speak their lingo "totally weak, dude!". Another type of with a weak reputation is the video-game movie adaptation. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time are both fun, silly, ways to kill off some time but the Super Mario Bros film or Street Fighter? Screw them.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a comic-book/graphic novel series that doesn't have the most superhero-like hero in all fairness, a geeky teenage dork trying to hit it with the girls and the guitarist in a failing rock band, but doesn't have a spandex suit and a tragic back-story. But you know what? That's a good thing. In fact, Scott Pilgrim could be the answer the dying trend of films about the funny side of adolescence was probably looking for twenty years ago and is the funniest, wackiest feel-good one since Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. It's also a mixture of different genres, a new take on the comic-book flick and the best movie about video games, possibly ever. If it was a cocktail, it'll be that extra-special one you get on your birthday with sparklers and enhanced with all liqueurs and spirits combined, giving you a real kick and leaving a sensation in your mouth that feels like, as Moe Syzlack put it in one episode of The Simpsons, "a party going on and everyone's invited" and your brain frazzled.

Edgar Wright, who directed his chums Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz may not had been available to shoot Paul for them but all three of them were trying to make it big across the pond with something that was totally un-British but with their usual flair and style. Wright obviously went his separate ways but Paul did show that Pegg and Frost can make a great film without him and thankfully enough, Scott Pilgrim has proven that the same can happen vice versa for Wright.

In the vein of B&T, Pilgrim reminds its audience that the main genre it falls into doesn't need issues on sex, drugs and alcohol or dirty cussing from the first minute to the last to make the other films of its kind entertaining or worth your while watching them. All you need is a fun story, great, likeable characters, a heart, cool action and crazy antics and Bob's your uncle. Don't expect realism here as you won't get it. That's like looking for quotes worthy of Shakespeare in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Wright jazzes up the usual teenage comedy formula like adding a dash of lemon zest to give it more flavour.

He becomes a teenager himself, sending up the past traditions of comics and video arcades with great affection, whether it's the on-screen cartoony/game-y sound effects and captions that describe each character or the Universal logo preceding the film been given an 80's arcade classic-style makeover with the same blocky graphics and tinny music.

It starts off like Inception on acid where the titular Scott (Michael Cera)is in dreamland and sees a girl loitering in a corner. He plucks up the courage to talk to her. His chat-up line? "Hi! Did you know Pac-man used to be called Puck-man?" She walks off, he wakes up and realises it was all a dream. Then, it's business as usual with the same old formula with that infernal ingredient - the "Will they/Won't they?" scenario - this being between Scott and his cute younger girlfriend Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). This tired cliché could have ground the first half to a halt but once you start watching, you can see what I've said earlier about Wright directing (as well as writing) as this situation is full of pep. But it's once our geeky hero ditches Knives for one delightfully named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and has to battle with "The League of Evil Exes" a group formed by her ex-lovers that the film gets groovy and kicks into high gear after a nearly false start. The second half is a complete montage of all the game classics of the last three decades that geeks will seriously lap up, the most obvious one Wright pays homage to be Street Fighter, with each battle zipping along and ending with the famous "K.O." effect but with each ex's body exploding into coins a la Super Mario at the end of a boss level. Game buffs will be watching this over and over in a desperate attempt to try and jot down each and every reference, more ingredients Wright adds to an already delicious mix.

For those who either aren't into games or comics or simply just grew out of them, they will still have a great time seeing Pilgrim thanks to a belting script, a terrific cast and a list of characters who are destined to become favourites amongst the crowds of people who are going to love this. Cera makes Scott a hopeless if hopeful character who's likably affable throughout. Kieran Culkin (Macaulay's brother and on-screen cousin in Home Alone 1 and 2) enjoys himself in a brief spell as his gay flatmate. Brandon Routh is all macho after his turn as Superman as butch vegan ex-boyfriend Todd Ingram and Jason Schwartzman is super-slimy as Gideon, the brains behind the group of exes. As for the girls, Winstead is pleasant enough but it's Wong who's the hottest hands-down. Pilgrim may have done the dirty with her but it all works out in the end.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has the makings of an instant cult classic - a coming-of-age, super-hero, comic-book, video game, comedy, action, adventure but overall feel-good film that's full of power and zip.