Film review: Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Published on Wednesday 25 August 2010 18:56

SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD (12A) **** Directed by: EDGAR WRIGHT Starring: MICHAEL CERA, MARY ELIZABETH WINSTEAD, MARK WEBBER, JASON SCHWARTZMAN, ANNA KENDRICK

'YOU seem a little heightened," says the wonderfully named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) at one point in graphic novel adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs The World. The title character's objet d'amour is referring to his habit of frequently viewing life through a reality-altering pop culture prism, but she could just as easily be referring to the film's director, Edgar Wright.

After all, the Brit maverick behind the camera on cult TV show Spaced and films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz has made a career out of creating sweet but truthful relationship comedies featuring characters whose figurative emotional states are literalised in terms of the pop culture they've been constantly bombarded with and willingly consume. Whether it's an argument between friends rendered as a game of Mortal Kombat, a zombified slacker forced to sort his life out during an actual zombie apocalypse, or an action movie-obsessed village bobby who finds himself in the midst of a Bad Boys-style gun fight, Wright's work captures better than anyone else's the ways in which multi-media-literate geeks weaned on movies, comic books and video games tend to relate to their lives via the heightened realities of their cultural obsessions.

With Scott Pilgrim vs The World, he pushes this sensibility into overdrive. Based on Canadian artist Bryan Lee O'Malley's hipster, Manga-influenced graphic novel of the same name, the film tells a relatively straightforward boy-pursues-girl-of-his-dreams story with such a hyperactive mash-up of styles, references and intricate sight gags it's sometimes difficult to take it all in.

The result is maddening but endearing; crazy but not extraneously so - the latter thanks largely to the care Wright and his co-screenwriter Michael Bacall have taken to configure the film's reality to justify every quirk as an extension of their hero's somewhat warped point of view. This is the sort of film, for instance, in which thought bubbles drift off the screen and sound effects come with the whoosh of onomatopoeic lettering; where action sequences take on the look of arcade games ranging from Atari vintage to PlayStation modern; where canned laughter accompanies scenes of sitcom-style domestic bliss, and where a character's knowledge of the linguistic derivation of Pac-Man proves a useful tool for self-preservation.

The hero from whose head all this is escaping is a gormless, panicked, 23-year-old bass player for Toronto-based indie rock band Sex Bob-omb.Played with typical winsomeness by Michael Cera, Scott Pilgrim is nursing a broken heart that has given him a complex about his hair and transformed him into a vague, disconnected emotional idiot whose self-absorption is blinding him to the hurt he's causing those around him.

This comes to a head when he falls for the aforementioned Ramona, a new-in-town New Yorker looking for a fresh start after some relationship traumas of her own. Instantly smitten after she appears to him in a dream, Scott pursues Ramona with puppy-dog abandon - only to discover that in order to be with her, he must first defeat her seven evil exes who are played by, among others, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman.

These exes materialise in various guises and Wright stages their battles as video games in which Scott must progress to the next level if he's to have any chance of winning Ramona. It's a device that grows a little repetitive, but it also works as a neat metaphor for the way new relationships are a constant battle to keep neuroses in check, especially the jealousies that arise when contemplating a new partner's relationship history.

That's usually more of an issue when the girl is clearly hotter than the guy, and the film smartly acknowledges the fact that nervous insecurity doesn't automatically make the underdog a nice person. While Scott is pursuing Ramona, for instance, he's also stringing along Knives Chau (played by Ellen Wong), a devoted 17-year-old groupie with whom he's had a chaste relationship, but with whom he hasn't had the guts to be honest, a course of action that has incurred the disapproval of his sister (Anna Kendrick), his band mates, and his deadpan gay roommate (Kieran Culkin).

It's a nice touch that, as the battles get progressively harder, his opponents start to hue a little closer to his own physical appearance, suggesting that this is really a film about a guy coming to terms with himself and confronting his own mistakes before he can move on with his life.

That this emotional dimension doesn't get lost in such a stylised, hectic film is a testament to Wright's skills as a director. His over-caffeinated style won't be to everyone's taste, but it's good to see him move into the realm of big-budget filmmaking without compromising his vision - heightened though it may be.