I need to say right at the start that I am not a gamer. That may be one of the reasons why “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”, which is basically a movie set inside a video game, didn’t work for me. But there are a lot of other reason why it simply doesn’t work, period.
Scott (Michael Cera) is a 22 year old who lives in Toronto and plays in a band. He’s dating a high school girl named Knives, but he sees this new girl in a dream, meets her and ends-up falling in love with her. But in order to have a relationship with Ramona, Scott has to fight and defeat her Seven Evil Exes.
The movie’s look is a combination of a video game and a comic book. It’s based a popular six-volume graphic novel series. The look is kinda cool in the beginning. In fact, I liked the first half-hour of “Scott Pilgrim”, as you get to know the characters and can enjoy the unique style of the film. There are some laughs and some smiles.
But once the evil exes begin showing up all the fun comes to an end and the movie turns into this long…long series of fight scenes that aren’t exciting or interesting. It’s the same punching and kicking over…and over. You stop caring for the characters or how things are going to work out.
Now, I guess if you’re a person who enjoys playing video games for hours and hours with the characters battling each other for points and coins then you’ll probably enjoy the last hour and a half of “Scott Pilgrim”. That’s just not my idea of a good time in real life, or in a movie.
There’s a pretty good cast: Anna Kendrick (“Up in the Air”) plays Scott’s sister, Jason Schwartzman is the 7th evil ex and two superhero stars – Brandon Routh (Superman) and Chris Evans (Human Torch and Captain America) are also evil exes (a nice touch for the comic book fans). But the performances are overshadowed by the look of the film, which is the real star.
“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” is rated PG-13 for some adult subject matter, action-violence (which is stylized and shouldn’t bother anybody) and some language (but most of the “bad” word are bleeped out). It’s clearly meant for the teen to young adult gamer crowd.
On The Official Kid Critic Report Card, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” only gets a D+.
It was one of the big bombs of the summer and I doubt it’ll do much better on DVD.