Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

A couple of years ago, with nothing else to do on February 14th, I decided to start celebrating Valentine's Day alone, by treating myself to a private movie night in.

(I do this most Sunday nights anyway)

The past two years, my entirely arbitrary selections have been The Graduate and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, which have unintentionally turned the event into something of an 'alternative' Valentine's movie night.

This year I've been so busy that I've had to put it off for about six weeks, but tonight I finally got around to sitting down with this year's skewiff love story - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

Scott (Michael Cera who reminds me of a young Zach Braff) starts dating Ramona, but to continue to do so, he has to fight and defeat her seven evil exes. (Sesame Street have probably done a skit on this) They all have quite brilliant super-powers, however that's not much of a problem for Scott, because it turns out that he also has super powers. While this makes for dazzling effects, it also has the knock on consequence of making Scott's fear difficult to empathise with. Had he defeated them all using his wits, as he did with the vegan, well then…

As love stories go, it's hardly anyone's typical romcom. The titular Scott gets through relationships with four significant others during the course of the film's narrative, while Ramona, as you may have heard, has double that.

For a film with such a high number of liaisons going on, it's impressive that the film is really much more about fighting. And jokes.

Director Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz) eases a little off of the spoken witticisms in this one, preferring to focus more on spectacular visuals meshed with an awesome soundtrack. If the characters don't appeal, then it's really no matter. You can turn your brain off fairly early on and just enjoy the spell-bindingly retro ride for all it's worth.

Definitely one for the cinema. If only they had made it in 3D.

It's like watching Tron 2, but with gags.

(available here)
(with thanks to Herschel)