Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010) Review and The Trouble with Comedy

I don’t give a rat’s ass about retro-gaming. I like Halo, I like Mass Effect. I didn’t grow up playing Mario or Zelda, and the only Final Fantasy I played was three minutes of FFIV. A lot of what happened in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World I only had a minor grasp on in terms of the references that we’d expect from Edgar Wright, but what’s important in a movie like this is that the experience comes through, and these references, while over my young head, certainly made that happen.

Here’s a movie that’s all about creating a visual world, creating a look, moving rather quickly, and being unique. The visual effects were constant, over-the-top, but organic, and perhaps that’s what keeps this from being something like ever other comic book adaptation that’s even been made: its reality is apart from our own, wheras the X-Men are grounded in our drab contemporary world, making everything embarassingly pulpy, despite it trying its damnedest not to be. By being self-aware, Scott Pilgrim feels confident in everything it does, and is technically strong.

When the first ‘evil ex’ flies onto the scene, it doesn’t seem strange because the audience is trained to accept bizarre imagery, even though the previous imagery manifested out of the mundane. The opening moments of the film work to establish the new world over the one we accept as reality – transitioning us into bigger and better set pieces.

This sense of pace hasn’t been seen in a PG-13 action movie in God knows how long, probably since The Rundown from nearly a decade ago. It moves along swiftly, and the forward momentum is helped along by visual playfulness, for example during the fight with Brandon Routh, where he seems to teleport to another place once he’s off frame.

Action directing is more than choreographing and shooting fight sequences (an art that’s lost on many a filmmaker, East or West), a lot of it comes out of the storytelling. Story? Just like in Die Hard, Commando, Crank, Doomsday, Hard Boiled – it’s nothing to write home about. It’s got a good premise, but the real kicker is in the way it’s told. Plot points are hit with precision, and the characters are what drive it forward, amped up on those absurd effects.

Of course, the most noticeable thing about a character, to me anyway, is who it’s being played by. The faces that came up in this movie really shocked me. I was just as shocked and pleased to see Thomas Jane making a small appearance as I was in seeing Southland Tales, and he’s only one of the many cult actors having a laugh in this movie. Aubrey Plaza essentially reprises her role from Parks and Recreation, a show that may not sound any good, but trust me Season 2 or whichever one just ended, was shockingly good. Then we have guys like Brandon Routh and Chris Evans, your typical leading men-types, playing these comic assholes – and it works.

And then we have Kieran Culkin.

After seeing Igby Goes Down, I pretty much wrote the actor off entirely. Every delivery he made in that movie made we want to reach into the screen and punch him, and when Jeff Goldblum of all people finally did it, I cheered inside. That movie was terrible and I was under the impression that he was the worst part. When I saw that he was in this movie, I didn’t even have time to say, “God this guy sucks,” because whatever first came out of his mouth had me dying. He was easily the funniest character: Scott Pilgrim’s gay roommate who always makes the punchline and has a wonderful but subtle relationship with our hero. Very surprising.

Michael Cera, who gets a lot of hate for playing the same character, worked here because he’s a believable dweeb. He’s clumsy and the scene that best encapsulates this is his first attempt to pick up Ramona Flowers. He tries to tell some story about the origin of Pac-Man that he related earlier, and he stumbles and shares an incredibly awkward laugh with himself before stalking off and saying, “Do you mind if I never talk to you again?”

There were moments in this movie that I laughed out loud at, and since I typically try to skip watching comedy movies, making rare but important exceptions (Black Dynamite), it was refreshing. My general philosophy is ‘why spend 90 minutes watching something designed to make you laugh if you can just research Nicolas Cage Losing his Shit and get multitudinous more entertainment value in a fraction of the time and cost?’ Yeah, Step Brothers might be funny, but it wasn’t seemingly custom tailored to make me laugh like some videos you can find online are. They’re bound to be there because there’s so many, whereas there’s only a few comedy movies, and aren’t they all kind of the same?

Invariably, the two characters will have some sort of bromantic break up and there’ll be a classic walking montage right before they team up for the end of the movie. Pineapple Express was a surprisingly funny movie until this moment, and I was just too distracted by how formulaic it all became.

Unless you do find yourself watching a comedy like Black Dynamite or It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, or anything directed by Edgar Wright, there’s a good chance that the movie wasn’t a labor of love. Comedy is the biggest cash-grabbing genre I’ve observed (sci-fi is sometimes balanced by a Children of Men every five years), going for the leading men like Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller (though they are kinda… 2004), and playing it safe.

Is it just to dismiss an entire genre like that, when this site is devoted wholly (mostly) to the legitimization of one? Of course not, but too many comedy movies seem to be coming out just because damn it, we need another comedy movie. That’s why we’re going to start seeing comedy franchises like The Hangover, and pretty soon we’ll see comedy franchise reboots. You know how Hollywood is. It’s been years since I’ve been excited to see a comedy movie that was released wide in the theatres, and historically I’ve enjoyed trash like Zoolander and Anchorman, but it’s not high entertainment like Scott Pilgrim. It doesn’t fire on all cylinders, and those movies don’t have to be such extravaganzas, but at least have a fucking R-rating, for Christ’s sake.

This Unrated-Cut for the DVD nonsense is old. To be fair, it works equally poorly for horror and action like Terminator Salvation. What the hell was that? Or how about The Chronicles of Riddick? How do you make a terrible movie terribler? There’s your answer.

Well, as long as I’m keeping this informal and unorganized tone and style, I’m excited to see Super 8 this weekend. Anybody else?

One more note about Scott Pilgrim – Mary Elizabeth Winstead is definitely the actress to look out for. She’s great in every single last role I’ve seen her in (Death Proof, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), she’s super attractive, and wouldn’t you know it she’s got a great singing voice. Let’s hope The Thing prequel doesn’t suck, but I don’t think anybody was kidding themselves (except for me).