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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
2010, Edgar Wright
Put simply, this movie is da bomb! Or at least the BOB-OMB. Breathlessly yet wonderfully stylized and self-conscious, constantly amusing, effortless hipster doofusness, post-post-modern mash-up of romantic angst, deadpan comedy, a Musical and '90s Nintendo-era video games. Michael Cera is Pilgrim, a twenty-two-year-old Toronto lad who is in a band and dating a high schooler, still nursing the broken heart from his now-famous ex, the lead singer in a popular band. But he meets his dream girl, Romona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and quickly after becoming smitten realizes he must do literal battle with her legion of seven evil exes if he is to win her hand or heart or whatever. The fight sequences structurally work the way songs and dances did in the golden age of Hollywood Musicals, substituting gravity-defying Kung Fu and the like for melodic interludes. It may sound incongruous, and it probably should be, but somehow Edgar Wright and company manage to pull it off in an energetic and satisfying cocktail.
I read the comics when they first hit the scene in the mid-two thousandsies, and while I liked some of what was going on the Manga-infused adventures never quite pulled me in all the way. But the movie's mixture of all those disparate memes and modes had me hooked right away. Terrific young ensemble, including Alison Pill, Mark Webber, Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman with an amusing cameo by Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins Jr. It's a heck of a lot of fun, I'll be seeing it again soon.
GRADE: B+
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
2010, Edgar Wright
Put simply, this movie is da bomb! Or at least the BOB-OMB. Breathlessly yet wonderfully stylized and self-conscious, constantly amusing, effortless hipster doofusness, post-post-modern mash-up of romantic angst, deadpan comedy, a Musical and '90s Nintendo-era video games. Michael Cera is Pilgrim, a twenty-two-year-old Toronto lad who is in a band and dating a high schooler, still nursing the broken heart from his now-famous ex, the lead singer in a popular band. But he meets his dream girl, Romona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and quickly after becoming smitten realizes he must do literal battle with her legion of seven evil exes if he is to win her hand or heart or whatever. The fight sequences structurally work the way songs and dances did in the golden age of Hollywood Musicals, substituting gravity-defying Kung Fu and the like for melodic interludes. It may sound incongruous, and it probably should be, but somehow Edgar Wright and company manage to pull it off in an energetic and satisfying cocktail.
I read the comics when they first hit the scene in the mid-two thousandsies, and while I liked some of what was going on the Manga-infused adventures never quite pulled me in all the way. But the movie's mixture of all those disparate memes and modes had me hooked right away. Terrific young ensemble, including Alison Pill, Mark Webber, Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman with an amusing cameo by Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins Jr. It's a heck of a lot of fun, I'll be seeing it again soon.
GRADE: B+