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Movie Rec: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Sunday, August 15th, 2010 03:44 pm(Is my music choice hip enough for this post? Well. No matter.)
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a frothy, video gamey love story that's fun to watch and never takes itself too seriously. (In fact, had the movie taken itself seriously, I would have been seriously pissed off at some of the weirder plot twists and developments. As it was, I could easily snicker and ignore them because the rest of affair was so silly.) Scott is a disaffected 22-something, perpetually between jobs, and as the movie opens, dating a 17-year-old, Catholic-school-attending girl. (Two of the major female characters in the movie take him to task for this, repeatedly, along with his gay roommate/best friend.) But then he meets the literal girl of his dreams and starts romancing her instead, only to find out that to date her, he has to defeat her seven evil ex-'s in video game style combat. Video game martial arts, guitar dueling, and romantic pratfalls/hijinks ensue.
On the good side, the movie feels like a puff pastry of magical realism, filled with a sweet, romantic center. When Scott and Ramona kiss, little hearts fly over the screen, and she is so hot that her shoes are often on fire, melting snow and clearing a path for her rollerblades in the streets of Toronto (which have never looked more picturesque). Other funny visual side effects include the showers of coins that follow the villains' demises (the amount of coins gets bigger and bigger with each passing defeat, with a literal shower of coins for the Big Boss), the out-loud sound effects (the phone goes RING RING RING; people fall through the sky screaming AAAAA, in little trails of letters that follow them all the way down), and the cartoonish combat between our hero and the assorted bad guys. It's clear that the filmmakers wanted this to be as close to the comic book/video game experience as they could, and for the most part, they've handily succeeded. I also liked the goofy banter that persisted throughout, whether in the form of a Bollywood dance number in the middle of a fight, or the Big Bad complaining about the amount of work that he had to put in to forming the League of Evil Ex-'s. (2 Hours!)
My only quibble with this whole thing is that it made me feel old. It's clear that for all of the characters in the story, 30 is pretty much the end of the world. And for the most part, that's fine, because what this story is really about is the drama of that first relationship: OMG, LOVE, that's completely different and I'm the first person who's ever felt this way about another person! Generally speaking, this sort of tumultuous love is a twenty-something experience. Still, it's a little weird to feel "old" at age 34, especially with my recent revelations that drama like that is the thing I need to avoid in my life.
I hadn't been too keen on this movie, mostly because I'm not too interested in the comics. I paged through the first volume, wasn't grabbed, and moved on. Now, I'm starting to wonder if my comic reading standards are set at just a little too high for me to really experience new things. I have a rule about new comics, which is in place mostly to save my wallet, but also lets me exercise snobby common sense: if I absolutely, positively do not like the artwork after about five pages of a comic or twenty pages of a graphic novel, I don't finish it and I don't buy it. In the case of O'Malley's work, it was a twofer: I didn't read anything that immediately invest me in any of the characters, and the art style was too cartoony for my tastes. I have great patience with a story if the pictures are pretty (see Tsubasa), and I'm likely to pay attention to a story even if the artwork is not actively crappy (see several installments of Sandman where the artists and their style change radically). I've even come to really enjoy more cartoony and stylized art (see Powers) if it fits with the tone and pacing of the story. But I gave up on O'Malley's work perhaps too quickly, which leads me to wonder if I'm judging books a little too harshly on their covers these days and if I should try to relax a little more.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a frothy, video gamey love story that's fun to watch and never takes itself too seriously. (In fact, had the movie taken itself seriously, I would have been seriously pissed off at some of the weirder plot twists and developments. As it was, I could easily snicker and ignore them because the rest of affair was so silly.) Scott is a disaffected 22-something, perpetually between jobs, and as the movie opens, dating a 17-year-old, Catholic-school-attending girl. (Two of the major female characters in the movie take him to task for this, repeatedly, along with his gay roommate/best friend.) But then he meets the literal girl of his dreams and starts romancing her instead, only to find out that to date her, he has to defeat her seven evil ex-'s in video game style combat. Video game martial arts, guitar dueling, and romantic pratfalls/hijinks ensue.
On the good side, the movie feels like a puff pastry of magical realism, filled with a sweet, romantic center. When Scott and Ramona kiss, little hearts fly over the screen, and she is so hot that her shoes are often on fire, melting snow and clearing a path for her rollerblades in the streets of Toronto (which have never looked more picturesque). Other funny visual side effects include the showers of coins that follow the villains' demises (the amount of coins gets bigger and bigger with each passing defeat, with a literal shower of coins for the Big Boss), the out-loud sound effects (the phone goes RING RING RING; people fall through the sky screaming AAAAA, in little trails of letters that follow them all the way down), and the cartoonish combat between our hero and the assorted bad guys. It's clear that the filmmakers wanted this to be as close to the comic book/video game experience as they could, and for the most part, they've handily succeeded. I also liked the goofy banter that persisted throughout, whether in the form of a Bollywood dance number in the middle of a fight, or the Big Bad complaining about the amount of work that he had to put in to forming the League of Evil Ex-'s. (2 Hours!)
My only quibble with this whole thing is that it made me feel old. It's clear that for all of the characters in the story, 30 is pretty much the end of the world. And for the most part, that's fine, because what this story is really about is the drama of that first relationship: OMG, LOVE, that's completely different and I'm the first person who's ever felt this way about another person! Generally speaking, this sort of tumultuous love is a twenty-something experience. Still, it's a little weird to feel "old" at age 34, especially with my recent revelations that drama like that is the thing I need to avoid in my life.
I hadn't been too keen on this movie, mostly because I'm not too interested in the comics. I paged through the first volume, wasn't grabbed, and moved on. Now, I'm starting to wonder if my comic reading standards are set at just a little too high for me to really experience new things. I have a rule about new comics, which is in place mostly to save my wallet, but also lets me exercise snobby common sense: if I absolutely, positively do not like the artwork after about five pages of a comic or twenty pages of a graphic novel, I don't finish it and I don't buy it. In the case of O'Malley's work, it was a twofer: I didn't read anything that immediately invest me in any of the characters, and the art style was too cartoony for my tastes. I have great patience with a story if the pictures are pretty (see Tsubasa), and I'm likely to pay attention to a story even if the artwork is not actively crappy (see several installments of Sandman where the artists and their style change radically). I've even come to really enjoy more cartoony and stylized art (see Powers) if it fits with the tone and pacing of the story. But I gave up on O'Malley's work perhaps too quickly, which leads me to wonder if I'm judging books a little too harshly on their covers these days and if I should try to relax a little more.
