When I first started discussing the Scott Pilgrim movie, I referred to the screen adaptation of the Canadian manga series as "Twilight for Hipsters," based solely on a barely-fleeting knowledge of anything the book was about (in both cases) -- it was immensely popular among the alt-nerd crowd and was a constant topic of discussion on 4chan's Comics and Cartoons board, along with Avatar the Last Airbender and fan-drawn pictures of DC and Marvel divas farting. So, I had those as points of comparison to leverage a fair and modest assessment of Scott and company. Oh, and I read the
Wikipedia entry for the comic and I think it caused me to develop some form of malignant eye cancer. As a medical journalist, I feel most adequately prepared to endure such a hardship.
Also of note is that I refused to read a page of the series, because I'm a journalist and have integrity. Needless to say, I was ready to be entertained by this movie, self-trolling or otherwise.
Given that I have all the logical faculty of two infants fighting over a toy train, I asked a friend for night out to go see the movie with me after we "prepared" beforehand. This ultimately turned out to be the best decision before seeing the movie, as it dulled my normally hyper-critical sense of viewership and allowed me to sit back and have the screen do the work for me.
Scott Pilgrim, if for some reason you fall into my "hipster garbage" stereotyped ignorant line of thinking and know nothing about the series, follows the relationship-related antics of an early 20-something living in Toronto, Canada. Scott is kind of a looser -- he mooches floor (and bed) space in a gay friend's apartment across the street from his childhood home, he's in an admittedly not-very-good band (The Sex Bo-Bombs) with his friend and an ex-girlfriend, he lacks any real job outside of his role as bassist of the barely-trademark-legal band, and probably some other things because the movie doesn't really go into much more detail than that. It is also clear, from the onset, that our boy is prone to making bad relationship decisions, as he's introduced as in a relationship with a 17 year-old Asian Catholic schoolgirl, which is both fundamentally kinky-if-you're-a-weeaboo and kind of pathetic, after a much maligned breakup with a past ex, who is, from the looks of things, doing pretty well for herself.
Our hero dreams of the mysterious Ramona Flowers, a colorfully-headed "hipster chick" with a good deal of emotional baggage not so much carried around as the baggage follows her around and challenges any potential suiters to a series of battles to the death. A League of Extraordinarily Childish Antics, if you will. The two meet in person once at Scott's girlfriend's school library and again at an after-party following a Sex Bo-Bomb's gig. Scott, while still in a relationship with the Asian child, attempts to woo the aloof Ramona, but lol, Michael Cera movie. Whatever sort of magnetism Pilgrim resonates apparently has some effect, as the two wind up making out in Ramona's bed that night and leaving with promises of a second date. It is in the coming days that Scott will meet the first of seven "evil exes" that he must duel with "and defeat" to finally win Ramona's love.
From the onset, the viewer is greeted with a pixelated UNIVERSAL logo over a chip-tuned rendition of the company's theme. This should give you some idea of what's to come -- lots of nerdy pats on the back, video-game like visuals, over-the-top meta-humor, and a readily apparent sense of self-deprecation. Or at least you should consider it self-deprecation. Look at it this way -- every time you pick up on a reference to some facet of nerd culture, punch yourself in the face, hard. By the time you get to the end of the second evil-ex battle, you will either be in a trauma ward or will find Family Guy really funny. I'm not sure if it's this constant wink-nod relationship with the nerds in the room (the adults buying manga-style books, written and drawn in Canada) that draws people to the series or is the exact element that causes so many others to lash out at the series online and otherwise.
The pacing of the movie is rather staggered. It starts out slow, which is fair, as there are many characters introduced early on with interesting backstories covered more in context than in brief manga-panel-animated cutscenes, but by the end of the third battle, exes start crawling out of every nook and cranny because, hey, we need to wrap this shit up at some point.
This necessary drive toward a timely end also stifles what should be one of the most interesting aspects of the entire movie -- development of the evil exes' backstories. Early battles are prefaced with the aforementioned comic-styled overviews of Ramona's relationship with the assorted exes, but this gets completely removed later on to the point where a DJ versus Indie battle of the bands is reduced to mere visual effects warring than the tense interplay between scorned and new love established in earlier fights. Then two fucking Chinese myth dragons shoot out of the dj-duo's speakers, and at this point I start screaming because I am not messed up enough to handle this.
And that was a good place to be, just inebriated enough to turn my brain off for a bit. If there's nothing else this movie has going for it, it is fun. Stupid, simplistic, nerdy fun. Sound effects appear as animated text, hearts fly around as the two dream-crossed lovers kiss, giant caps K.O. appear onscreen during an ex's knockout ala EVERY FIGHTING GAME EVER, the style of shots are arranged in a way that most visually encapsulates the still medium of the comic book onto the moving pictures brand of storytelling. And it all works.
Sure, when I see this movie a second time next week, very likely sober and following a day at the office, I will probably pull hair at how XD SO RANDOM Scott and his Asian date act. I will probably shout in contempt, "WHY IS EVERY CHARACTER IN THIS MOVIE IN A BAND?" I will probably boo the preview the new M. Night movie... again. But hopefully I don't get too serious'd the fuck up, because otherwise I'd be missing out on the genuinely enjoyable movie-going experience I probably paid far too much money for (the second viewing will be in New York, for price point reference). I will still not buy this Americanized manga trash, though. Gotta have some standards.
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