Love in the Age of Video Games

Twenty-two year old Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) plays base guitar for a band called The Sex Bob-Ombs, and is dating a high-schooler named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). He's "between jobs" and so poor, he has to share a bed with his gay roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin), and whoever Wallace is seeing at the time. Nonetheless Scott is happy with his slackerhood, until he falls madly in love with the new girl in town, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and his life gets complicated very quickly. In order to date Ramona, Scott has to duel and defeat her seven evil exes, including an Indian mystic (Satya Bhabha), an action movie star (Chris Evans), a super-powered vegan (Brandon Routh), and a machinating mastermind (Jason Schwartzman).

"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" is the story of a very particular breed of young people in love. Their universe is made up of indie rock music, video games, and comic books. So director Edgar Wright, who mixed genres to great success in "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz," uses comic book visuals, a video game story structure, and a soundtrack full of Beck songs to bring it to the screen. And the results are fantastic. This is easily the best translation of a comic to a film that I've ever seen. The outsized stylization of the visuals is pervasive and well integrated into the narrative, so it actually serves a purpose in the storytelling. Simply having little pink hearts emerge when Scott kisses Ramona, or sound effects like "THONK" appear over Scott's head when he hits a utility pole might seem like a silly affectation by themselves, but taken to the extreme the way "Scott Pilgrim" does it, where Scott is literally dueling ninjas and supervillains for Ramona, everything fits.

Self-awareness is vital to the film's ability to balance the emotional reality of its love story with all the special-effects heavy action scenes and wild humor. Like with Wright's previous movies, "Scott Pilgrim" is largely satirical, but it also participates in and celebrates the genres it's spoofing. In this case the line is even blurrier, because nobody has ever done a straight video game or comic book genre film this well. There are so many little loving references and throwaway gags packed in here, the film deserves pop-up annotations. It's like Wright is inventing a new genre and subverting it at the same time. And it's surprising how well the film works simply as a straight romantic comedy. Even if you took out all of the wilder elements, the tone of the picture is perfect, with its hoodie-wearing hero and snarky dialogue about pretentious hipsters and wannabe rock stars.

I expect that older viewers might be wary of embracing "Scott Pilgrim" because it looks like it's geared to younger viewers at first glance. No one in the film seems to be older than thirty, but they're all carrying around an awful lot of familiar emotional baggage already. And despite the PG-13 rating, the relationships are portrayed with surprising maturity. As a viewer a bit older than the target audience, I found the romance nostalgic and the humor and action a lot of fun to watch. Michael Cera does a fine job of getting us to root for Scott, while at the same time making it clear that his greatest enemy is himself – his insecurity, his selfishness, and his immaturity. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is very wry and understated as the similarly imperfect Ramona, but she's such a memorable presence, I wish we got to see more of her side of the story.

But really, the best part of the film is the visuals. Scott and Ramona's relationship troubles get so much more oomph from being expressed in these larger-than-life showdowns and fantasy sequences. Wright is endlessly inventive, having Scott's opponents explode into showers of quarters after they're defeated, or one girl getting punched so hard, the colored highlights are visibly knocked out of her hair. Some of the best gags are the simplest, such as a character instantly identifying Ramona from one of Scott's formless scribbles. The pace of the humor is so quick and the attitude so tongue-in-cheek, it's easy to miss good bits. I know I'll have to see the movie again sometime just to catch the jokes that were drowned out by audience laughter. I haven't seen that happen since "Borat."

"Scott Pilgrim" isn't a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination. It has too many characters, and severely shortchanges several of them, including two of the seven evil exes. The action takes too long to get going, and the last act loses a lot of momentum after a predictable plot twist. But it's bright and energetic and fresh and new, and it gets so many things right, it’s well worth the watch. I hesitate to say that I'd like to see more films like "Scott Pilgrim," because it would be so easy to do something like this badly – "Speed Racer" comes to mind – but I hope this puts all those arguments about the opposing natures of video games and films to rest at last. Not only are they compatible, I think they were made for each other.