Editorial
Front Page - Friday, August 27, 2010
The Critic's Corner
David Laprad
It’s my sad duty to report that “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” is a box office bomb. I bought a ticket, but I was the only one in the theater.
I wondered if the projectionist looked down at me, sitting alone in a sea of seats, and thought, “What’s the point?” To keep from feeling self-conscious, I paid close attention to the commercials that preceded the movie, including the one in which the Fandango lunch sacks sang about guaranteeing my next movie ticket through their Web site. Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind for the sequel.
Based on a series of graphic novels, “Scott Pilgrim” follows its titular hero as he pursues Ramona Flowers, a knockout he spots at a party. The problem is, Ramona has seven evil exes, all of whom are going to make life hell for Pilgrim. If Pilgrim wants to date Ramona, he’ll have to defeat each one them in turn.
As played by Michael Cera, the awkward boyfriend in “Juno,” and the awkward male lead in several other movies, Scott Pilgrim is, well, awkward. At 22 years old, he has no job, crashes with his gay friend, is dating a high school girl and plays bass in a truly terrible indie band called “Sex Bob-omb.” He’s thin, lanky, walks around slumped over and has an epically bad haircut. He also slips on a nerdy winter cap whenever a girl mentions his disastrous ‘do.
Got the picture? Then imagine my surprise when the first evil ex shows up at a battle of the bands in which Sex Bob-omb is competing and Pilgrim annihilates the guy. My first thought was, how did this pathetic loser suddenly become the love child of Bruce Lee and Superman? Is screenwriter and director Edgar Wright trying to make a point about not judging a book by its cover? Or about all of us having an inner strength from which we can draw? Or...
Just now, the thought came to me that maybe Wright was saying, yes, “Scott Pilgrim” is weird, over the top and set in an alternate universe where beautiful chicks fall for pathetic losers who turn out to be good in a fight, but it still has something valid to say about the human experience.
Pilgrim does undergo a process of self-realization as he fights the evil exes, and in the end, learns to treat himself and others with respect. People tend to regard movies based on comic books as nothing more than popcorn fare. Maybe Wright is telling us to look deeper at our popular entertainment. Maybe.
I didn’t think about that while watching “Scott Pilgrim” because I was too busy soaking up the creative visuals. Imagine the hand drawn BIFFs, BAMs and POWs seen in the ’60s “Batman” series applied to nearly everything a character does in a movie, from ringing a doorbell to knocking out an evil ex with a powerful punch. In one scene, Pilgrim and Ramona kiss, and a little heart pops out of their locked lips. The heart remains on the screen until the next scene, when it shatters on someone’s forehead.
The animations not only give “Scott Pilgrim” the feel of a comic book come to life, but drew my attention to the little things that go unnoticed in most movies.
I also liked the many, many video game references Wright packed into the movie. Bad guys collapse into piles of coins when defeated, a sound byte from the original “Mario” arcade game plays when Ramona pulls out a giant sledgehammer during a fight, and when Pilgrim gains self-respect during the final showdown, words pop up onscreen showing how his stats have increased (+5 strength, +5 endurance and so on). Best of all, during a battle of the bands, Pilgrim earns an “extra life” he’ll need later on.
Finally, if you have a dry sense of humor, you’ll find yourself laughing quite a bit while watching “Scott Pilgrim.” My favorite joke was Wright’s send-up of the action movies in which the hero slips on his gear in preparation for a big battle. Complete with rousing music and rapid fire edits of Pilgrim buttoning his shirt and snapping on a wristband, it ends with a quiet, 30-second close-up of him tying his shoe in real time. Wright, who wrote and directed the zombie movie spoof, “Shaun of the Dead,” has a great sense of observational humor.
It’s a shame, then, that no one is going to see “Scott Pilgrim.” Wright balances the humor, action, special effects and relationships like an old pro, and delivers a movie that’s touching without being sappy, unrealistic without being stupid, fun without being insulting and packed with cool fights. In other words, it delivers everything movies with larger budgets and more hype behind them don’t.
Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.
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