After years of depressingly awful video game adaptations, Edgar Wright gives the nintendo 64 generation something to be proud of. The first explanation of people's feelings on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World will most likely be that it is a video game movie. However, it's so much more than that. It's fast-paced, super-kinetic, action-comedy of the highest degree. Only Edgar Wright is capable of doing films like this anymore. He's dealing with the same sort of territory that he was with Hot Fuzz, but with a more romantic edge to it. The best way I can put it is that it's an R-Rated film, despite its PG-13 rating.
You know the plot by now. Scott Pilgrim meets his dream girl, and has to overcome her seven evil exes in order to be with her. Along the way he deals with hostile exes of his own, and his own personal problems. It's the story of a boy becoming a man, and killing people. There is action in this film that would make Quentin Tarantino proud, and it apparently does. People die in this movie, and nobody really cares, or at least nobody in the movie. That's the universe that Edgar Wright lives in, and it's a fun place to escape to for a while.
Now as much as I love Scott and Ramona, and how their romance is really the backbone of the film, they aren't my favorite characters. The three characters the three characters that make this film so amazing are Wallace, Scott's gay roommate, Scott's 17-year-old ex-girlfriend Knives Chau, and Kim, the drummer in Scott's band. Wallace is pretty much the coolest gay guy in the world. He's like Barney Stinson for men. A great deal of the laugh out loud parts of this movie are due to him.
Knives is the personification of the audience. She's one of the geekiest characters put on screen, and props to Ellen Wong for pulling this off. If there's a part of this film that scared me the most, it's her, and that's a compliment. And then Kim is just a great character who doesn't get enough screen-time. Literally every scene she's in, she steals. It's something that you have to see for yourself. Most of the actors in the film give pretty good performances, and for once I didn't hate Chris Evans. He plays a total jerk, but I actually liked him. Maybe this bodes well for him.
Either way, you won't be seeing this movie for the performances. You're here for the comedy and the action, and both are delivered in full. A few jokes don't quite hit their mark, but there's nothing dislikable about it. The action is obviously similar to that of video games, but it's got its own unique flair. Every time they break into fighting, the crowd is watching with full attention. Ultimately, while the film may not be up to the same calibur as Inception or Toy Story 3, it's still better than most films out there.
B+
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