The comedy Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is based onthe graphic novels of Bryan Lee O’Malley, and traces of its cartoon origin aregleefully sprinkled throughout the film. When the phone rings, the word “RING”pops across the screen. When Scott Pilgrim’s punk rock band rehearses,electrical bolts radiate from the practice space. The movie is replete with thespoofing antics of a league of supervillains pitted against Scott, the amiableyoung man who summons his own unexpected superpowers to thwart them.
Michael Cera appearsin the lead role. With his ironic smile and air of being just a bit smarterthan most of the people in the room, Cera is a mild-faced, 20-somethingeveryman, well cast as a protagonist beset by super-size versions of ordinaryproblems. Only hours after dreaming of a purple-haired punk girl, he encountersthe girl of his dreamsand then what? The word “STALK” races across the screenas he follows Ramona around.
Initially blasé andreluctant, Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) agrees to date Scott, but there isbaggage from her past to overcome in the form of the Seven Evil Exes, thesupervillain caricatures Scott must defeat if he wants her. They arrive in theorder Ramona knew them, starting with her seventh-grade boyfriend, theBollywood character Matthew Patel, who crashes (literally) into Scott’s gig atthe battle of the bands. Scott defeats him in an aerial ninja duel. And on itgoesyoung Pilgrim’s Herculean task of contending with Ramona’s past whilewrestling with the broken hearts and bruised egos he has left behind.
The battles Scott engages in are funny,especially his contest with the blockhead action-movie star and his team ofstunt doubles. The real hilarity, however, comes from the story’s knowingsendup of the tragically hip, sometimes too-cool edge of the alternative rockscene. Filmed with split screens and brilliant segues from scene to scene byBritish director Edgar Wright (Shaun of theDead), Scott Pilgrim vs. The Worlddives into a subculture of dim, paneled basement rooms where geeks thrivealongside the arrogant lackeys of local stars, where the vegan police, arrivingin a squad car with flashing green lights, arrest an idiotic rock god fordrinking half-and-half in his coffee. If any detail seems a little last decade,the film has that covered with the opening fairy-tale disclaimer: “Not so longago in the mysterious land of Toronto…”
