Last weekend, Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables was number one in the US box office, not least because of its appeal to draw audience nostalgia from its band of beefy action stars from explosive 1980s action films. Meanwhile, a modestly advertised movie called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World also opened the same weekend and was a box office disappointment. In a fairer universe, Scott Pilgrim would have blown The Expendables right out of this world with its far greater achievement in delivering pure fun.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the latest film by British director Edgar Wright, who may now corner the market in turning fading genres into funny satirical comedy. His last two movies, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, brought out like a spring fountain the hilarity lurking under the preposterousness of the zombie and the bombastic Hollywood buddy cop action genres, respectively, while still paying affectionate homage to their roots. While Scott Pilgrim is not quite up there with those two comedies, his turn to old school video games proves his sharp eye for loving, visual satire.
This is the movie you wish all the past video game adaptations had been, only that this is adapted from the graphic novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley (and video games have yet to serve as rich enough source material for a movie). From the opening Universal logo theme played with that old organ synthesizer from Nintendo games, the movie grafts all the familiar video game tricks into a wild, clever visual comedy. Its only drawback is that the movie, towards the end, gets a little too carried away with its visual tricks.
Michael Cera, who has never seemed more comfortable in a role before, stars as Scott Pilgrim, a 22-year-old slacker dweeb living in Toronto, Canada. He leads a garage rock band of even dweebier slackers including his ex-girlfriend, Kim Pine (the wonderfully droll Alison Pill), Stephen Stills (Mark Weber), and Young Neil (Johnny Simmons). Just like a video game, the movie introduces each of its characters with a black box on the screen containing the name, the character’s age, and a distinguishing trait. Scott actually starts out as a bit of a jerk, as he is casually dating a 17-year-old girl, Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), merely to stop himself from being lonely from his break-up with his last girlfriend, Julie (Brie Larson), much to the chagrin of his sister, Stacey (Anna Kendrick). There is also his gay roommate, Wallace (Kieran Culkin), who draws some big laughs in his unusual forwardness with some guys he is introduced to.
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Article comments
1 - Marvin
I believe Scott's last girlfriend was Envy Adams (Brie Larson), also known as Natalie.
Julie just keeps getting and breaking up with Stephen Stills.