Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jason Scwartzman, Kieran Culkin
Directed by Edgar Wright
Running Time: 112 minutes
Rated: PG-13
Scott Pilgrim… is a really tough one to critique, which is precisely why I wanted to provide more than one take on it. That’s why I’ve dedicated an entire Point-Counterpoint article on it this week (a friendly debate with sometime contributor/ comic aficionado/ The Action Room host Tony Wolf). Check it out here - in the meantime, I’ll post an abbreviated commentary here.
On the one hand…
On the one hand, the movie is unique and imaginative – hardly the same old, flat drivel my multiplex tends to spew at me on any given Friday. It’s fast paced and frenetic – and while I compare a lot of 
movies like a roller coaster, this one was more like a carnival Tilt-A-Whirl, dizzyingly fast paced with all sorts of lights and buzzers and loud music coming at you with reckless abandon.
In other words, not boring.
On top of that, the movie has a quirky charm in some places, and Cera’s dry humor is always welcome in my world. I just wish there were more of it.
On the other…
That said, Scott Pilgrim ended up being hard to like… and, for me, provided yet another example of why comic books/ graphic novels are so difficult to make into engaging movies.
First of all, the characters aren’t all that likeable. Ramona follows in a long line of cold, unattainable bitches with no apparent redeeming value whatsoever – and yet the entire universe is smitten with them. Pilgrim isn’t much better. He’s a pathetic schlub who borders on creepy in dating the under-aged and inexplicably awestruck Knives Chau (though I do concede that is the coolest name ever).
But that’s fine. I’m all about bitches and schlubs, if they make me either care about them or want to get further at the core of why they’re the way they are. Take Enid – the glum and anti-everything main character at the center of Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World… or the uber-curmudgeon Harvey Pekar in American Splendor. I loved both of those characters and those movies, because they were complex. They grew. They overcame their own personality issues to deal with real life. I watched them develop in front of my eyes. Scott and Ramona? Not so much.
The two characters don’t bring anything out of each other – there’s no chemistry, so it’s no surprise that during the finale (and I’ll do my best not to give anything away here), you don’t feel any emotional impact. Personally, I didn’t know how I wanted it to end… and I get the feeling the movie didn’t either. Director Edgar Wright treats the ending like something he tacked after he flipped a coin.
I feel like Edgar Wright considers the characters secondary. Maybe he assumed we (the audience) were all fan-boys and –girls, already having digested the six volumes of source material and filling in character motivation and backgrounds on our own to supplement what was lacking on screen. Or maybe he was just more preoccupied in digitally adding the words DING DONG every time the doorbell rang. Or making zippy cuts back and forth, trying to throw my attention span like a mechanical bull.
Which gets me to my second point: the movie is jammed together pretty hard. Six volumes is a LOT to condense into a two-hour movie. Couple that with the repetitive storyline – fight evil ex, find Ramona, feel insecure, repeat – and consider this dead horse sufficiently beaten.
The Verdict:
I kept feeling this would’ve made an interesting cool TV miniseries – where you have time to breathe in between, watch Scott develop as a person, see how his relationship feels, get to know him a little more, wait for the next baddie to jump out from the next panel, etc. But here? Much like the Tilt-A-Whirl, I left with a headache, slightly nauseous and not wanting to do it again. Mike’s verdict: C-
But don’t just take my word for it…
The Metacritic score was 68 out of 100 (“Generally favorable reviews”). And again, you can also read my Point-Counterpoint article with The Action Room host Tony Wolf about the merits of the movie here.
Rated PG-13 for stylized violence, sexual content, language and drug references.
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August 22nd, 2010 at 10:26 am
Good review man, I have to say, I had the EXACT same problem with the movie. It looked great, but I just DIDN’T like Scott and Ramona here OR in the comic. The side characters made me give it a B myself, but the lack of any sufficient subplots with them sort of killed it.