Going Beyond the Impossible And Making the Believable: A Review of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Scott Pilgrim actually succeeded in passing completely under my radar; I had never heard of the comic, I don't think I ever saw trailers (and if I did I obviously forgot it), and the first time I remember hearing about it was during my weekly Rotten Tomatoes check where I saw it was garnering mostly positive reviews. When a friend invited me to accompany him to watch the film, I accepted purely on those grounds.

Therefore I walked out of the theater having been very pleasantly surprised, since Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is likely one of the best movies I've seen this year (although to be fair I haven't been super happy with the offerings). It's always a nice surprise when a movie comes out of the blue like that.

I think there are two main points as to why I enjoyed the film so much. The first has to do with the scope, for lack of a better word. It seems the directors/producers/etc had a specific vision in mind, and they seemed to have pulled it off without any part failing. The acting is good, effects excellent, soundtrack good, editing, wardrobe, etc etc. No part was lacking and everything came together really well. I think all the actors were well cast, and he-whose-name-I-always-forget (Michael Cera, and I just had to look that up) mad a surprisingly good "action" hero, despite his inherent painful awkwardness. They also managed the feat for making the female "punk" outfit actually work, from my perspective. Surprise minor roles from people like Anna Kendrick and Mae Whitman were also cool.

The second point has to do with the title; although the film made no attempt to be completely ridiculous (what with people exploding into coins and Scott drawing a sword from his chest) for all it's over-the-topness, it managed to be somehow more authentic when it came to the love story. Although I'm not expert in "chick flicks," I've obviously seen a lot of movies that revolved around a love story, ranging from Twilight to the Notebook to Titanic and whatnot. However, Scott Pilgrim seemed to really hit home and actually resonate with me in terms of what relationships are like. I can't really pinpoint what facets make it the case, and it's not like any of the relationships actually correlate to experience I've had, but the way the characters behave and the way the actors perform their roles just felt unforced, realistic, and completely not-Hollywood. Obviously this is only my feeling and I don't know if others feel the same, but it was definitely one of the strongest points of the movie.

Beyond those things, the action scenes were cool, the characters pretty interesting (although, as always, Michael Cera was Michael Cera + Superpowers) and it felt culturally relevant to me. One thing I will warn was that, when I saw the reviews, I saw a lot of them mentioned the "lots of videogame references." This put me on guard, since I assume movie reviewers and video game enthusiasts don't overlap very much. I think I was proven correct, since the movie deals with a substantial number of video game tropes (particularly fighting games) it never gets referential in way a show like The Big Bang Theory gets, where a majority of the viewers may not get a joke. The closest thing was the FF2 and Zelda themes playing, but I never felt like there was a joke I got that people with even a passing familiarity of gaming wouldn't. However, this is far from being a flaw, and rather just an observation.

Anyway, the movie has been out for a while now, and I can happily recommend it to all my friends, since it is quite enjoyable and worth seeing. If you do miss it in theaters, it's not spectacular enough to regret not seeing it on a big screen, so do yourself a favor and find it next time you're wondering what movie to watch.

-HTMC