British filmmaker Edgar Wright has quietly carved out a very impressive career over the past eleven years or so. Be it his television series Spaced, 2004’s romantic zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead or his 2007 spoof of American buddy cop films, Hot Fuzz, Wright’s work has proven to be both quite smart and very funny. Each production had one common thread outside of Wright: the participation of actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Their contributions, be it starring in the leads or helping out with the writing, cannot be underestimated.
Unfortunately, the dynamic duo was not around to assist Wright on his first American production, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World. And boy does it show.
Based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley and starring Michael Cera (Juno) as the title character, Pilgrim is the story of a 23-year old Toronto musician (with a 17-year old girlfriend named Knives Chau) who one day meets Ramona Victoria Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the girl of his dreams (literally). In order to win over Ramona, Scott has a big task ahead of him: he must defeat seven of her evil exes before they finish him off. His “foes” include a skateboarding actor (Chris Evans), a Vegan Rocker (Brandon Routh), a pair of identical twins, someone that looks like a pirate, a girl and a smarmy record executive (Jason Schwartzman). If he can defeat all seven, Scott may have a shot at true love. If not, he can always go back to cradle robbing.
If you’re not into videogames, anime or are older than the age of twenty, then you will probably want to skip this film. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the biggest fan of videogames (I have a few), anime (Miyazaki’s work aside) or comic books (never warmed up to them). I will also admit that I am way past the targeted age group for the film (let’s leave it at that). But since I enjoyed Wright’s earlier work immensely, I was more than willing to give his new film a shot. If Wright could smartly send up police actioniers and horror movies, why couldn’t he make a smart, funny movie out of a graphic novel that with across-the-board appeal?
Judging by the overwhelmingly positive audience reaction at the screening I attended a few weeks back, he may very well have. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the thin characters (I did get a kick out of a few of the exes), ADD-generation editing and obtrusive use of comic book visual trickery. While I applaud Wright’s efforts to be as faithful as possible to the source material, I found that the visual verbiage, paneling and retro videogame graphics only pushed me further away instead of drawing me in.
Another big problem I had with the movie was Wright’s choice of leads. Now, I thought Michael Cera was good in Juno and Superbad, but I’ve come to realize that the young actor is giving the same performance over and over again (a few episodes of ‘Arrested Development’ cemented that theory pretty quickly). Thanks to Cera playing Cera, Scott comes off as a mousy, whiny dork not worth cheering on in the least. What exactly does Ramona see in Scott, anyway? And for that matter, what does Scott see in Ramona, aside from the fact that she’s cute (well, Winstead is anyway)? The thin characters don’t give us any clues as to why, and neither do the somewhat lifeless performances.
I really wanted to like this movie and cheer on Scott Pilgrim as he took on “The World” to win over Ramona, but in the end I just couldn’t. I have no doubt that the film will please the legions of fans of the graphic novel, but I’m not sure it will appeal to too many folks outside of that. As for Wright, I have no doubt that he will bounce back and give us another movie with quality along the lines of his earlier work. He simply needs material that will match his talent.
– Shawn Fitzgerald
