Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Pac Man-Boy - Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
 
Time Investment: 112 min.
Return on Investment: 90 min.
 
The intense color-bars-and-punk-imbued opening credits for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Universal Pictures), Edgar Wright’s adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels, sums up the overall movie well: an onslaught of visual stimulus punctuated with references to old video games and punk rock.
 
Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Spaced) brings his ADD-addled pop-culture sensibility to O’Malley’s epic tale of unemployed 20-something Torontonian Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), who splits his time between his rock band, Sex Bob-Omb, and trying to get over his ex-girlfriend with help from his gay roommate, Wallace (Kieran Culkin—finally, a mainstream movie that doesn’t desexualize or mock its gay character). Then Scott meets the woman of his dreams: roller-skating vixen Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Problem is Ramona’s seven evil exes have banded together to destroy Scott, and if he wants to be with her, he has to defeat them first.
 
The film’s fantastical world is filled with plenty of gimmicks, some pitch perfect, but many that get old quickly. The fantasy world Scott lives in—where many comic geeks dream they could live—lacks grounding in the simple, universal ideas at the story’s core—love, rejection and self-confidence. This keeps it from being a great stand-alone movie and makes it more of an ode to O’Malley’s comic (much like Zach Snyder’s Watchmen). Still, like many of the cheesy video games that inspired it, Scott Pilgrim is a hell of a good time that you just can’t ignore. —Benjamin Solomon