Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
This is one of the very rare occasions when I’ve actually seen something that’s been in theatres (spell check tells me that’s the wrong way to spell theatre but it’s TOTALLY NOT!) less than a week, but Scott Pilgrim was a movie that I knew I didn’t want to miss and it’s release having coincided with a week I was looking to fill with any and all kinds of distractions I grabbed a couple of my friends and saw it. It was wonderful. There was so much that I loved about this movie, I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll start with that Kieran Culkin (Igby from Igby Goes Down) is a most fantastic actor and he is perfect in this movie. His character Wallace was undoubtedly my favourite (THAT IS ALSO THE CORRECT WAS TO SPELL FAVOURITE GO AWAY RED LINE), he was wonderfully sarcastic and witty and his interaction with Scott was the best thing about the movie and if I could change one thing it would be to add more of it. The other thing I loved about this movie was it’s tendency to surprise me with pop-culture references. Now, you may be thinking, “What do you mean surprise? Half the point of that movie was to make pop-culture references,” and yeah, that was half the reason I went to go see the movie, but I expected mostly references to 90’s video games, and yeah there were a lot of those, but quite a few others that I didn’t expect. I won’t reveal what they are because being surprised by them was a large part of their entertainment value, but they’re there, and you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen the movie, or will when you inevitably do (because everyone should). As a whole the movie is fast paced, witty, action packed, and at moments endearing. A few people may feel a little alienated by the mass amounts of culture they won’t understand, but even without understanding some of the references I think most of the humour (Are you kidding me!? THAT IS HOW IT’S SPELLED.) and the story itself are relatable to a much larger audience than most people perceive.
Okay, I’m really terrible at writing about things I like, so here’s the fun part, what I didn’t. To be clear, all of my issues with this movie are trivial, I include them only because I enjoy complaining. My biggest issue is that I didn’t see what was so attractive about either of the two main characters. I mean I liked Scott, I love Micheal Cera and I thought he did a terrific job, but what he did a terrific job of was playing a character who’s 22, lives across the street from the house he grew up in, has no job, and plays bass (yes, I did just italicize bass as a method of expressing disdain, deal with it) in a band that I wouldn’t expect to ever be popular anywhere beyond their hometown, if that. What then do Ramona and Knives see in him? That wasn’t the worst of it though, to an extent I can accept girls going for some guy for no reason apparent to me, mostly because I’m not a girl and never understand what they see in anyone (who’s not me anyway), but as a guy I didn’t get Scott’s infatuation with Ramona at all. I think I can probably for the most part blame it on her hair, which was first pink (ick), then blue (eh), then green (ghastly). With the right clothing (or lack thereof) you could see that she had a pretty nice figure, but not on its own deserving of what Scott went through in pursuit of her. Now that is of course extremely shallow but I don’t think she had a very interesting personality either. Her character is largely supine (I had to look that up to make sure it had the definition I thought it did, it does) and little is revealed about her not directly pertaining to the exes that control her. I can understand being enticed by the mystery but I didn’t get the sense that there was much of anything that interesting to be discovered. Again, it’s probably all because of the hair.
I think that what made me love this movie, instead of just really really liking it, is right there in it’s title, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. This is probably something that holds true for most people who have seen or will see the movie, I was able to empathize with Scott’s battle against insurmountable odds, and it was satisfying for just this one time to see the world lose. Plus it’s hilarious.
Final Score: 95/100 (All 5 points off for the hair.)