The Summer of my discontent continues. I can’t say that I walked into Scott Pilgrim with high hopes, I loved Michael Cera in Juno, but his one note acting ability got old real quick. In every movie he’s in he gets to be the hero, gets the girl, gets to be in a band and have his own posse and does it all with very minimal effort. Is he a geek, slacker or cool guy? He’s all of these and we as an audience is supposed to feel some connection to him but he and his characters always come across as too aloof. Scott Pilgrim has moments when it is laugh out loud funny and has some truly cool action scenes but it’s overdone, over the top and they are so darn smug and self-aware about everything.
It’s like a 13 year old geek got their first shot at making a movie or writing a story and this is the weird, self involved fantasy world they came up with. This movie has something for everyone, if you are a guy then who wouldn’t want to be Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) a jerk who is in a band and gets all the chicks. Sure one of them is in high school, but your ex is now a famous rock star who still wants you and the new girl is another pseudo hipster who is like a female version of you. And oh yeah, for some unknown reason you know how to kick butt and take numbers – Street Fighter style. Who wouldn’t want to be a cool girl like Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)? She has no trouble getting a man to fall madly in love with her (for no apparent reason) and then have them all pine long after the break up to the point where they want to beat your new boyfriend into a pulp and her current guy is willing to literally fight for you? This girl and Pilgrim are the ultimate Mary Sue characters – The author’s dream version of himself/herself.
This movie is from one of my favorite Directors – Edgar Wright (the man behind the brilliant Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz). He manages to successfully mix all the different styles and genres here, but he goes overboard with flashing lights, text pop ups, and every other film school 101 trick in this movie. If he’d just let everything play out instead of inserting himself into every scene. I didn’t hate this movie, but I felt tired walking out of the theater. This is a movie for people with severe ADD. It ultimately suffers from gimmick overload.
Final Grade C
EM Review
By Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 08.13.2010
“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” is a very different comedy about someone who must vanquish seven “ex’s” in order to date a new girl in town. Great cast, special effects, and script. For a ‘hip’ audience.
GRADE = “B+”
You got the characters of Kim Pine and Ramona Flowers mixed up in your review. Kim is Scott’s ex-girlfriend, the drummer in his band and it’s Ramona’s (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) ex-boyfriends who are coming after Scott.
Thanks. Apology for the obvious mistake…
Ok, wow. This movie is originally a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, where in the novel everything is video game based, kinda chaotic, and with kinda old style 8-bit side scrolling fighting style and video game feel to it. So, none of the action scenes or any other part in the movie were overdone, over the top, etc. because it was made to resemble the graphic novels. Which explains, for you, all the text pop ups throughout the movie, and the flashing lights, because, if you actually pick up a comic book or graphic novel, you’ll notice all the action panels and even the normal ones too, have text pop ups, and flashy kind of drawing. If you’re still not following, this movie was made after the graphic novels it was based off of, which means there were no gimmicks, nothing being overdone, and Edgar Wright doing an amazing job at recreating a series of graphic novels that are phenomenally great!
Might I suggest you Google the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, pick up copies of the six volumes, and read them? Maybe you’ll understand why the movie is the way it is, and better appreciate it for the amazing recreation that it rightfully is.
Scott Pilgrim is very much a movie for comic nerds and classic gamers. Where you hated an overload of visual gags, I and many of my friends absolutely loved them (growing up wishing life could be more like video games makes jokes like “pee bar” nothing short of epic).
Ultimately, the target audience for Scott Pilgrim is the only audience who will love it. Which is sad, IMO, but also unavoidable.
Also, “If he’d just let everything play out instead of inserting himself into every scene.” is a sencence fragment. Bad grammar, FYI.
*Sentence.
Lol at my own fail.
I knew Mickey wouldn’t like it, but come on … at least TRY to be a wee bit knowledgeable about the movies you’re reviewing. I find it bothersome that you have a job where you get to review movies yet know nothing about them and don’t care enough to find out.
I don’t exactly know what film school you think you might know something about, but I don’t think they teach you text pop ups in Film School 101 or whatever gibberish it was that you wrote.
One of the guys above me already explained that had you known even a smidgeon about the book (or read ANYTHING about the book online), you’d have realized that Wright didn’t do anything at all except translate what was in the book. All of it is there … the pee meter, the extra lives, the hearts in the air, etc.
Look … I’m not trying to give you a hard time or be mean, but if you are going to be a movie reviewer, then you need to have a passion for it. You clearly don’t. I mean, seriously … how long does it take to google Scott Pilgrim and at least learn a LITTLE something about it because you make a fool of yourself. It’s just lazy … and your vote shouldn’t count toward the Rotten Tomatoes meter because you haven’t earned it.
“The Summer of my discontent.” lol Yeah, that’s because you have awful taste and zero knowledge of film. It would be like me reviewing women’s make-up. Sure, I could do it, but why would anyone hire me to do so?
I’m trying to think of something meaningful to add to these comments….mostly because Michelle already encapsulated my own opinion so well. I’ll start by saying this: Scott Pilgrim is just a fan service for the Gen-Y segment that grew up on Nintendo, Mountain Dew, comic books, and anime. If that’s your forte, then God bless. But for the rest of us, this movie was a tedious and mind-numbing exercise in geeky-hipster chic at it’s worst – with the added bonus of having ridiculously bad dialog. Cera spends most of the movie literally mumbling these asinine 4-word sentences, half of which is the word “like”.
And the whole “well if you’d read the comic book” argument lends no credence here. If the imitating material grates the nerves, then the imitated material (the book) probably would too. It’s just one of those things that either appeals to you or doesn’t, and whether or not my opinion falls into the minority makes no difference whatsoever.
To give credit where credit’s due, I did enjoy the creative use of computer CG graphics.
fuzzbox,
Don’t throw around terms like “geeky-hipster chic” when it doesn’t make any sense. People use these terms (Gen-Y, too) as a way to look down on a generation when they truly have no idea what it means. Scott Pilgrim is no more geeky-hipster chic than Gilmore Girls was cyberpunk.
It’s just a label. A stupid label that means absolutely nothing in the real world. A label that people use in order to separate themselves. I know a lot of “kids” in the age range you’re talking about and they’re nothing like that. In fact, they’re not too different from the kids I grew up with 15 years ago. They just have prettier games now. But when you throw around terms in a way that makes it sound like you know what you’re talking about, it only succeeds in distancing yourself from people who aren’t really that much different. You might want to THINK you’re different, but by and large, you’re not.
I also don’t understand the ridiculously bad dialogue comment. It’s not Shakespeare, but come on … it had funnier lines than about 95% of The Hangover and people loved that stupid movie.
(Okay, The Hangover isn’t a stupid movie … the script is really good … it’s just not very funny.)