*Side note: I try not to get spoilery in this, but if you haven’t at the very least read the books, I’d steer clear of this until seeing the movie, just in case.
*Double side note: I’m sorry if this doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. I’ve been really exhausted lately.
Allow me to preface this review-ish thing by saying that I have been a balls to the wall, foaming from the mouth Scott Pilgrim fan since around 2006/2007. So this review will most definitely be effected by my unfaltering love for the source material. As you may know from my prior reviews I am not in the business of synopsis, so I’m just gonna dig right into what I thought. If you don’t know the plot to this movie, go watch the trailer or something (or better yet, go read the Scott Pilgrim comics!).
First thing’s first: I loved this movie. I loved this movie a whole bunch. I spent almost the entire run time of this film with an enormous stupid shit eating grin stretched across my face, laughing and giggling like a school girl watching a Zac Effron flick. No this is not a perfect adaptation of the comic books. The only book that gets transferred almost page for page is the first one (which is about the first half hour or so of the movie). Everything after Scott’s battle against Matthew Patel (Evil ex-boyfriend #1) spirals off into a very different series of events that will still hit most all of the same important plot points (and dialog exchanges) of the books, but from completely different angles and settings. So basically all the major events from the books are present, just not where you expect them. Lucas Lee Skate board challenge? Yup, but different. Knives Chow vs Ramona? Yup, but not where you think. Surprise Roxie attack? Yup, but not at the same place. Todd vs Scott bass off? Yup, but way different (and actually WAY more awesome).
At this point you may be thinking, “but reviewer guy, you are one of those crazy fans that are supposed to be extremely pissed off at adaptations when they change the smallest of details! What gives?”
What gives is that even with all the changes, all the parts cut out and all the parts added, this movie still encapsulates the raw spirit and style of the comic books so astoundingly well that it just doesn’t matter. Watching this movie, as a fan of the comics, is almost like being granted the chance to completely re-experience reading them for the first time.
The thing that both Brian Lee O’Malley’s books and Edgar Wright’s adaptation have in common is the ability to display really down to earth, human issues in a super hyperbolic shell. The movie, just like the books, is as sincere and warm as it is completely balls to the wall insane. So many of the sweetest moments in the film come either right before or right after something totally bat-shit crazy occurs. Like the fleeting exchange between Scott Pilgrim (played surprisingly well by Michael Cera) and his ex, Envy Adams (played by an almost distractingly hot Brie Larson) after Scott defeats her boyfriend Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh). Scott says something about Envy being angry at him, and she responds with:
“you just headbutted my boyfriend so hard that he burst” (he totally did, it was awesome).
To which Scott responds:
“Well, you kicked my heart in the ass, so I guess we’re even”.
This tiny exchange during the aftermath of an absolutely absurd super powered filled battle immediately brings the whole story down into very down to earth, real emotional territory. This happens very often in the film.
They both also handle the subject of videogames better than any other artists in their respected medium. There are a staggering amount of videogame winks and nods in Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe, and they are all clever and handled with reverence and respect instead of just empty punchlines. There are the obvious ones, like how people explode into coins upon being defeated, and Scott having a Pee Bar that depletes when he goes to the bath room, but there are also lots of subtle nods as well, like an early scene where Young Neil (Johnny Simmons) is playing a Nintendo DS while everyone berates Scott for dating a 17 year old school girl and the tinny game music coming out of it ends up being the background music for the whole thing. This may seem very minor, but to me it seemed like a total nod to the type of background noise you would hear in an apartment filled with twenty-something’s in 2010. There are lots beautiful little touches, like when sees Ramona Flowers (Mary Elisabeth Winstead) in his dreams for the second time, the dream is accompanied with a really cute chorusy rendition of the underworld theme from The Legend of Zelda, or how when Scott tries to break it of with Knives Chow (an absolutely painfully adorable Emma Wong) it just so happens to be in an arcade, next to a cabinet with it’s continue timer loudly counting down. I wont even begin to get get started on the myriad of sound effects ripped from tons of classic games, but I wonder how much of the movies budget went towards licensing them. It really wouldn’t be farfetched to say that because of these great little touches, Edgar Wright has pretty much inadvertently made the first great videogame movie, or perhaps the first great movie dealing almost directly with videogames.
The movie does have it’s flaws, it smashes a 6 volume comic book story that takes place over the course of a full year into a 2 hour move that takes place over the course of a couple of weeks, which leads to some underdeveloped characters and unresolved plots. The movie also relies on an almost seizure inducing amount of special effects, especially during Scott’s final showdown with Gideon Graves (Jason Scwartzman, who O’Malley correctly pointed out as being way cooler than his comic book version of Gideon), which is equal parts fantastic and overwhelming.
For the sake of stopping myself from being too rambly, I will end my thoughts here by saying: Scott Pilgrim vs The World is a really great movie that, just like the comic books, encapsulates exactly what it is like to be a young person living in this current era.
Also: hot ladies.
Also also: Jason Schwartzman/Michael Cera SWORDFIGHT.
