Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Review

In some ways, we’ve seen Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World before. Director Edgar Wright adopts the same postmodern eschewing of popular culture used by Natural Born Killers, Sin City & every Quentin Tarantino film ever made. Comic-book sound effects crowd the frames with the actors, competing with smart time progression, snarky dialogue & an overall tone which screams “look at us commenting on society’s disposable nature!” It’s hugely comic & exhibits a visual spark which few films aspire to, but it doesn’t feel new or different. At least at first.

As time goes on, however, & they settle in to Wright’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it universe, the true extent of his sinful genius becomes known. He’s not mocking popular culture in a postmodern fashion; he’s mocking postmodernism itself. The hip, cynical, too-cool-for school barrier that Gen Xers throw up to shield themselves from constant media bombardment; the ADD blipstream of throwaway references masquerading as smart dialogue; the widespread attitude that inexorable mockery is the only way to stay safe from the world… all of that serves as targets for the director’s wit. With that single act, he moves Scott Pilgrim in to the ranks of near genius.

The title character springs fully born from the pages of the indie comic which spawned him: an amiable, largely unmotivated bass guitarist for a not-especially nice Toronto garage band. Actor Michael Cera dusts off his Arrested Development method for another go-round, punctuated here by sudden bursts of fantastical kung fu when the forces of sinful conspire to damage him. Specifically, he faces four super-powered douche bags, former beloveds of the girl of his dreams (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) whom he must damage if he wishes to save her. They form the fulcrum of the film’s whiplash jolts in to the surreal. Before the first one arrives, Scott’s world seems comparatively normal. Wright adds a sheen of meta-commentary to the proceedings--noting each character’s primary traits in video-game terms, for example--but otherwise, they recognize it as ordinary midwinter Toronto.

Then the first sinful ex arrives: Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha), sporting Bollywood dance moves & a bevy of demonic chicks singing back up. & suddenly they take a lurching left turn in to WTF Land, as Scott leaps off the stage to copious sound effects & commences a brawl straight out of the X-Box. There’s no explanation, no dream sequence framing & no way to escape. It happens… & the surrounding figures find nothing unusual about the gravity-defying duel any over they do the shower of gold coins which rain down on the proceedings four times a victor is declared.

With the laws of what they understand to be physics tossed aside, Scott Pilgrim leaps full-bore in to a strobelight fever dream: countless explosions & metacomments, which the characters treat as no more different than pigeons on the sidewalk. For sheer inspired lunacy, it's few equals, & Wright brings every trick in his substantial playbook to bear for the sake of blowing our socks off. The results are very impossible to beat.

The director elevates his game even higher by tempering his ambitions with emotional sincerity. While this universe may follow blipvert logic, the characters exhibit the same longing, desire, fear & hope that someone who’s ever been in love has experienced. Everything is in play except for those feelings; every preconceived notion is ripe for upending save them. That lets us immerse ourselves in the countless stream of references without being swept away by them, grounding us in relatable truths that feel no less palpable for the cavalcade of snark surrounding them.

Scott Pilgrim thus manages to have its cake & eat it , linking us to comic & exquisite emotions through the shared absurdity of our mutual cultural experiences. The manic fragmentation of Wright’s references ultimately leads us back to where they started: a necessity for connection, a way of laughing together, & a sense that we’ve shared Scott’s triumphs & tragedies in our own lives. That prevents us from detaching from the inspired silliness onscreen. Like Scott, we’re knee-deep in it, & they can either find something genuine to cling to, or become as much a joke as the Nintendo blender surrounding him. The film lets us laugh at our mutual foolishness--in love & out of it--while honoring what they look for in the midst of it all. In a patently phony period, it may be the only thing worth taking on the world for. Thank God there’s bits of meta-commentary as nice as this one to remind us of that fact.