Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World was batshit fucking radcakes.
At this point, you should pause the review, down some Doctor Pepper (I don’t give a flying fig newton what anyone says, that shit is the liquid equivalent of a long hug from a hot neighbour), and hit play on the gem below. You see, to capture the brazen corona of awesome that may (hopefully) filter through this review of a film which critics are calling ‘batshit fucking radcakes’ (‘critics’ being ‘me’), you’re going to need a wee drab of immersion.
So if you’re not familiar with the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, which ran from 2004 up until July the 20th this year, you’re missing out. But ostensibly, the series and the movie are different entities, with different paths to follow, meaning you can enjoy both without one tainting the other. And carrying it off is no mean feat, although we do have Edgar Wright (the genius director of
Hot Fuzz and
Shaun of the Dead, and writer of the upcoming Tin Tin feature) at the helm.
The story focuses on Scott Pilgrim, a 23 year old bass player drifting around the Toronto indie scene, still gripped by the clammy trappings of a bad breakup. Pilgrim is played by Michael Cera, a rangy sex robot of an actor who exploded into the public eye (gross) when he appeared in
Arrested Development. Since then, he has honed his act down to a fine point. How fine? This fine.
I know, right? It’s like he confuses your genitals into wanting him.
Since portraying George Michael in
Arrested Development, Cera has played the young deadpan claymation fellow in many films, but he’s never been as good as he is here. Pilgrim is, under his expert and sexy tutelage (or ‘sextulage’, which is also, incidentally, a defunct nautical device), an effusive, self-effacing geek demi-god. He possesses a singular wit but always manages to falter whilst on the verge of ramming it home, which only serves to make him cripplingly endearing.
Furthermore, the fight scenes (which are perfect, by the way) work so well in part because they’re being carried out by a lanky, loping little funk wizard like Cera, and when he begins to kick the shit out of his blinking, fizzing adversaries, you can’t help but poop a little with joy.
At least I did.
So, that’s Scott Pilgrim. He’s a bass player in a band, and they’re called Sex Bob-Omb. Every member of said band is a shimmering little microcosm of nuances and nonchalance, and what’s more, they’re good. Partly because their songs were composed for the film by Beck, but mostly because the story gives them agency; the hero doesn’t have to have a deficit of talent to make his battles significant. They rock, but they’re too nice to really know it.
Scott is dating a high school girl, a 17 year old Chinese girl who goes by the name of Knives Chau (played by Ellen Wong, who resembles Cho Chang more than my pants are able to deal with). She swiftly devolves into a lovestruck groupie, and sinks her adorable mandibles into every facet of Scott’s life. Scott, however, has begun to have dreams about a gorgeous rollerblading hipster. And when he spots said enchantress in the flesh, he falls for her. Hard.
The implications of this are twofold. Firstly, he has to break up with Knives, a task which his gay roommate Wallace (played with superbly dry panache by Kieran Culkin) is insisting he does sooner rather than later. Secondly, he soon discovers that he has to duel with his dream girl’s seven evil exes.
His dream girl, it turns out, is worth it. Her name is Ramona Flowers, and beyond all her astral travelling and glib throwaways, she’s clearly destined to slot like a cartridge into Scott’s... uh... cartridge hole. She’s played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and she’s a perfect fit for the role; gorgeous, but deadpan.
Her exes are equally brilliant; Jason Schwartzman, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh and Mae Whitman all stand out with eye-popping performances/shitmixings. And each battle is utterly exhilarating, whether it takes the form of an all-out brawl or, in one case, a battle in a warehouse layered with amps; Sex Bomb-Omb face off against Japanese DJ twins in a battle to batter the opponent with sound monsters. Pilgrim ends up deploying a petulant chartreuse leviathan against two looming anime dragons. Your inner geek will have real trouble suppressing some of its less dignified urges.
Will it piss off devotees? Probably, but you’re bound to tread on some toes when you’re adapting a body of work adored by so many.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World leaves room for sequels, but doesn’t actually require them. It manages to sandwich pathos between searing layers of pixellated chicanery. Sure, it has cheesy moments, but in a world where life is played out like a video game, there isn’t anything you can’t put down to pastiche, be it the overlaid computer game graphics, or the library of vintage sound effects, or the moments where the fourth wall is being flirtatiously toyed with.
From the Universal Studios logo and theme song being rendered into a 16 bit console game intro to the cavalcade of computer game references (for example, bad guys when defeated explode into a shower of coins), it’s like stepping back into your teenage years and realising you never really left, because pop culture is your junk. Which is dangerous, given that this film is probably the most condensed slab of lovingly crafted electro nostalgia ever to grace the screens. Not only is it genuinely funny and bafflingly relatable (we’ve all wanted someone, and been willing to fight for that someone), but It’s also the most explosive orgy of pop-culture references since the time Seth McFarlane exploded. Which, granted, hasn’t actually happened, but is probably inevitable.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World opens in cinemas today (August 12).