"Scott Pilgrim vs. The World": review

I'm eleven years behind, but I'm finally reviewing 2010's "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," starring Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Scott's love interest, Ramona Flowers. The romantic action-comedy is based on a graphic novel by half-Korean Canadian Bryan Lee O'Malley and is directed by none other than Edgar Wright, who is probably most famous for his Three Flavors: Cornetto trilogy of films, "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz," and "The World's End."

Scott Pilgrim is a twentysomething bassist in a band called Sex Bob-Omb. He is between jobs, and he's dating a high schooler named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). Scott dreams about another girl one night, and then he sees her in real life: Ramona Flowers. Deciding he wants to be with Ramona but not having the guts to break up with Knives, Scott awkwardly pursues Ramona and eventually starts dating her. However, Ramona comes with a catch: she has seven evil ex-boyfriends (the League of Evil Exes), and for Scott to be able to date Ramona, he must battle with and defeat all seven of them.

Part video game, part animé in style, "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" takes us on a wild ride as Scott faces off against Evil Ex after Evil Ex, using unexpected martial-arts skills and magic to defeat his rivals. His first nemesis is Matthew Patel (Satya Babha), who conjures up demonic backup singers while flinging energy around. Next up is arrogant actor Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), whom Scott tricks into trying a skateboard "grind" at two hundred miles per hour, causing Lucas to explode. After Lucas comes Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh, surprisingly hilarious), a vegan whose veganism grants him magical, Jedi-like powers. Fourth is Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman), Ramona's one-time lesbian fling from a bi-curious phase. Roxy can appear and disappear like Nightcrawler of the X-Men, but her weakness is that she collapses into orgasmic jelly if you touch the back of her knee. Fifth and sixth on the list are the Katayanagi Twins (Shota and Keita Saito), whom Scott defeats with the help of his band. And finally, the last and greatest of the Evil Exes is Gideon "G-Man" Graves (Jason Schwartzman), the puppet master behind the whole mess.

No amount of explanation can substitute for the experience of actually watching the movie. To borrow a phrase from another movie critic writing years ago (at a guess, he was probably describing Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge"), "Scott Pilgrim" is stylistically aggressive. The visual and sound effects are nonstop and often hilarious. Everything moves like a cartoon, and surreal sequences blend into the mundane with sly smoothness. Despite all the trickery, however, the movie was apparently a box-office turd when it first came out, but it has since acquired cult-film status.

I am definitely not the movie's target demographic. With an aesthetic that often feels like a hyper-caffeinated cinematic version of the FX-heavy TV series "Parker Lewis Can't Lose," "Scott Pilgrim" is zany and postmodern. Although I couldn't relate to much of the hormonal twentysomething drama, I found the visuals incredible. Director Wright does his damnedest to make sure the viewer is never bored. It's hard, in fact, to think of a single scene that didn't include some sort of special effect.

That said, the movie suffers from a core problem: its two central characters, Scott and Ramona, really aren't that likable. No disrespect to Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who is a terrific actress, but I concluded pretty quickly that, if I were ever to encounter a real-life Ramona, I wouldn't find her worth pursuing. One problem is the mystery angle: Ramona is very tight-lipped about her past, and the thing about tight-lipped characters is that it's hellishly hard to transcend their reticence and create some real character development. Ramona comes off as stand-offish and selfish, often leaving Scott hanging because, in her self-absorption, she just "can't deal" with a stressful situation. Scott doesn't come off much better: he's both selfish and indecisive, willing to cheat on both Knives and Ramona; he's also self-absorbed and rather needy. In a morbid sense, Scott and Ramona are two damaged people who may deserve each other, but I found it hard to root for either of them.

Another problem is the aforementioned mile-a-minute special effects. The FX work, while humorous and generally top-notch, comes at you hard and fast, even by 2021 standards. By the time Scott is facing off against Gideon, the final Evil Ex, I had begun to undergo FX fatigue. And since I just mentioned Gideon, who is rather bland despite being the movie's Big Bad, I should also observe that the Evil Exes really don't strike me as all that evil, except maybe for Gideon himself, since he's the one who puts together the League of Evil Exes in the first place. Lucas Lee is arrogant and vain, willing to shout "Action!" instead of letting his director do it, but he isn't much more than a bully—not evil at all. Matthew Patel and the Katayanagi Twins are overwrought, but it's just as hard to see them as evil. Roxy Richter and Todd Ingram are in their own little worlds, but they're not really evil, either. Is the film using the term "evil" ironically? I also had trouble understanding what motivated the exes to fight for Ramona when none of them—except for Gideon—was in any way still possessive of her.

I do need to give a special shout-out to Kieran Culkin (brother of Macaulay) as Scott Pilgrim's gay roommate Wallace Wells, a guy who's able to text in his sleep, and who has a man-crush on Lucas Lee. Also of note is Allison Pill as band member Kim Pine, who once dated Scott and is now perpetually angry. Both actors are hilarious in their roles.

For my money, the funniest of the fight scenes is the one between Scott and Todd Ingram. Watching Todd wield his magical vegan powers like a malefic Jedi Jesus is a hoot, and I admit I laughed out loud several times during that fight. The only problem comes at the end, when we discover that Todd, after having ingested coffee with real cream, is on his third offense, causing the Vegan Police (Thomas Jane and the underrated Clifton Collins, Jr.) to show up and strip him of his vegan powers. The film doesn't quite get the chronology right: Todd's vegan powers fade on their own after he accidentally sips the coffee that Scott has tricked him into drinking, so what powers are left for the Vegan Police to strip?

It's a minor quibble in a movie that throws logic out the door in favor of sheer spectacle. And while the film's romantic core feels hollow to me because of its two unlikable central characters, the film itself is nonetheless something to see at least once, just for the hilarious (if tiring toward the end) special effects. Edgar Wright, as a director, is a bit hit-or-miss for me; I'm not one of his devotees. But he gets a lot right in "Scott Pilgrim," so I cautiously recommend this movie to you insofar as it's a visual treat, but nowhere near the best of the romantic comedies that are out there.