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| X-Box Live Achievement Acquired: Super Action Pose! |
One of the few keeping this movie enjoyable is Michael Cera’s adept performance as timid Scott Pilgrim, a mousy-voiced 23-year-old from Toronto, Canada. He supports himself through the punk rock band he’s on called the Sex Bob-ombs, a reference to an enemy type from the Super Mario Bros. video games. He also maintains a relationship with a high school girl named Knives Chao--yes, seriously, her name is Knives--who seems to be in a perpetual sugar rush. Her bubbly is much appreciated.
Scott’s relationship status changes from “in a relationship” to “it’s extremely complicated” when he falls for an apathetic Amazon employee named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who has seven evil ex boyrfriends with superhuman abilities--I am not making this up. In order to be with Ramona, Scott must defeat The League of Evil Exes, as it’s called, in over-the-top, anime-inspired fight sequences.
This movie gets even weirder when aspects of video game life come into play. When Scott faces an evil ex, the fight scene starts off as how a round in a fighting video game would start off: with a big vs. icon between Scott and the ex. When an ex is “killed”, he or she (not a typo) explodes, leaving behind a pile of quarters. Scott also scores points for achieving tasks, has a pee meter that appears when he goes to the bathroom, and can even pick up an extra life.
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| Get a life, Pilgrim. |
Some of these bits do work well at times. Try not to imitate the bodiless power–up announcer when he screams, “Scott Pilgrim obtained the power of love!” However, some big questions pop into my head: is Scott aware of the pee meter that pops up behind him when he uses the John? Do the characters notice that lightning bolts are flying out of their instruments when they perform? It's more difficult in movie form than in comic book form to tell what’s there with the characters and what’s not.
Plus, if this is the real world as a video game, characters should also have more real-world behaviors. For instance, if one of my friends were to be thrown straight through a brick wall like Scott is by a psychic vegan, my response wouldn’t be, “Hey, man. We’re going to go get some pizza. Catch you later.” Plus, when Scott kills the ex who dates Scott's ex, Envy, she doesn't have much of a mourning period. She's bummed out, but I'd expect a little bit more drama. Maybe I could accept the irony of some of these moments in a cartoon universe, but this is supposed to be real world Toronto with non-animated people.
The plot within this universe is a repetitive cycle of Scott talking to his band mates, talking to Ramona, and fighting an evil ex. The formula gets a little dull about halfway through the movie. It might not get as dull if it were to be read in its original graphic novel form, which can be ingested slowly at one’s leisure. This movie, however, seems to try cramming all six "Scott Pilgrim" books into a two hour movie.
Once the experience is through, your head will be so twisted that you’ll have to talk to the characters from “Inception” to figure out if you're not in a dream world.
Score: 6.5 out of 10
"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray
Images acquired from http://www.davidbarrkirtley.com/ and cracked.com
