1/5: Director Edgar Wright currently has a track record of films that has so far been fairly exceptional. Shaun of The Dead, in my mind is a modern classic, and Hot Fuzz, is a perfect buddy-cop movie whether it tries to be or not. With Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, his record remains completely untarnished. Based off a series of graphic novel by Bryan Lee O'Malley - which are superior in my humble opinion - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is able to rocket itself to be one of my most favorite films (so far, that is).
Scott is a Toronto-native hipster in his early 20s with no real direction in life. We learn that he's a bassist for his band, "Sex Bob-Omb" (bob-omb, as in Mario bob-omb), and is dating a 17-year-old, Chinese high school student, named Knives Chau, because "it's just simple". After seeing a girl literally in his dreams and then discovering she's real, he meets her at party, learning her name is Ramona Flowers. Eventually he scores a date with her, and it quickly blossoms into a relationship. While at a performance, Scott is attacked be Matthew Patel, one of Ramona's "evil exes". After defeating Patel, Scott finds out he has to defeat six more "evil exes" in order to continue dating Ramona. To put it shortly, awesomeness ensues.
The pacing is brisk and there's a whole lot of visual flare. In fact, gamers, such as myself, will get a huge treat due to the fact that this movie relies heavily on video game reference and even sound effects (I'll be the first to admit that the early use of sound effects from The Legend of Zelda games are most likely a large contributing factor to why I enjoyed this movie so much). The action is filmed and choreographed so much better than possibly 70-percent of movies these days and keeps the movie exciting to watch. But a large part of your enjoyment this movie comes in whether or not you can understand the characters. Scott comes off as a careless guy who cheats on his girlfriend, while Ramona is very uninteresting and can be somewhat deceitful. During the course of this story the learn to become better people, and you really have to look past their problems in order to see this.
The casting of this movie is none too short of perfect. Every actor plays the part so well, they may have been born that way. Even Micheal Cera as Scott Pilgrim, finds the perfect place for his trademark boring average guy. One role that sticks out in my mind is Kieran Culkin as Scott's "Awesome gay roommate", Wallace Wells. I feel he embodies my personal favorite character from the graphic novels exquisitely.
In short, see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World twice. It could be a turning point in the pop culture of this generation. Unfortunately, it's currently failing at the box office, which often causes a movie of this sort to be labeled as having "cult status", and do you really want this movie grouped with Troll 2? Neither do I. I will give Scott Pilgrim vs. The World 98/100 points
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