The third movie we saw at the cinema in an 8 day stretch, Scott Pilgrim has, like The Girl Who Played With Fire, had some bad reviews, but Empire liked it, so it’s all ok! I can see why people might not like Scott Pilgrim – it’s very much a movie for teenage boys, or people who’ve been one, who get the computer game references that come thick and fast and inform the style of the whole movie.
From the opening Universal logo, retro-fitted to an old computer graphic, with suitably old-fashioned computer game blippy music, Scott Pilgrim is one long series of in-jokes. But more than that, it’s frequently hilarious, energetic and unlike anything else I’ve seen. There are a whole heap of great characters played by equally great actors, and the movie sees Scott (Michael Cera, looking oddly buff in the fight scenes) becoming infatuated with Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and having to fight off her 7 evil exes to win her heart, oh and Scott’s band is meanwhile taking part in a battle of the bands contest. It’s preposterous, and oh so brilliant, working in a world with its own logic, where Scott can be punched into walls and survive, where the exes he fights burst into a shower of coins when he defeats them, and where pretty much anything can happen, if it has a basis in computer games.
The plot, when you boil it down, is fairly straightforward, what I enjoyed most about the movie is the many characters and their interactions with each other and Scott. Cera is adorable in the lead, and his gay roommate Wallace Wells, played by Kieran Culkin, provides standout support. The characters share a bed, often with Wallace’s boyfriend and other men friends, and they share an easy relationship that is wonderfully drawn. Other favourite characters are: Young Neal (Johnny Simmons), the mono-syllabic groupie who is much better than this description sounds; Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), Ramona’s second ex and object of Wallace’s crush; Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), the third ex who is defeated through a hilarious vegan-police intervention; and the wonderful Knives Chao (Ellen Wong) who is really the heart of the movie.
Knives is Scott’s younger girlfriend when the movie opens, who he dumps to go out with Ramona. I found this odd because Ramona doesn’t have much to recommend her, and it’s not really explained what is so fascinating about her other than she has brightly coloured hair. She’s a bit sullen and doesn’t really give Scott any encouragement, whereas Knives is loveably devoted to him. I thought that the brilliantly monikered Knives wouldn’t be in the movie much, but when she is dumped she becomes a bit of a stalker and jealous girlfriend, culminating in a great fight at the movie’s end. I was disappointed that Scott didn’t choose Knives to run off into the sunset with, and this was really the only downside of the movie. She was a much more interesting and fun character than Ramona who stands out as not being so good when all the other characters are so well defined and fun to watch.
June 2011 Edit: We've recently watched Scott Pilgrim again, on blu-ray, and it's still an awesome, hilarious, ass-kicking movie! With a great selection of deleted scenes and outtakes too. I think this will be a movie we come back to again and again.
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