What should have been the world’s greatest graphic novel adaptation turned into a prime example of how often it’s just incredibly unwieldy to come up with a great interpretation of a unique object from print.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World started its life as a digest-sized comic series by Bryan O’Malley where the protagonist is a young Canadian man living the dream as a bassist in a video game inspired world. If anyone is perfect to play a 23-year-old geek rocker from Toronto who’s trying to win the girl of his dreams, it’s Michael Cera.
Scott Pilgrim is a bassist in the band Sex Bob-omb. He lives with his gay roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin), platonically dates high school student Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) and suddenly finds himself struck by the thunderbolt of love when he meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the wild purple-haired girl of his dreams.
Unfortunately, he has to defeat Ramona’s seven evil exes in order to land a date. These past relationships haunt the new love interest in a way that makes for a great analogy to many real-life situations except the exes have incredible, destructive superpowers that make the challenge of winning her love much, much more difficult than anyone could imagine. We see these battles not so much as the fight for her affection but more for the freedom for these two star-struck lovers to come together and express themselves openly free of the baggage of the past. How wonderful is that?
The film is then punctuated with this series of duels complete with video game sound and visual effects, various powers and even ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. Lucas Lee (etc.)’ titles. I spent a considerable amount of time waiting for Donkey Kong to show up, but to no avail. However, our hero does have to engage in delightful martial arts fights, a true battle of the bands and other similar situations that blend and blur the definition of reality and fantasy. These accomplishments mount up to the ultimate foe, a superdude named Gideon Graves (the awesome Jason Schwartzman) in a battle royale that even requires Pilgrim to use an extra life.
Strangely, the movie starts with very little energy until the band, The Sex Bob-ombs, start rocking out the opening credits. The brief musical interludes periodically inject life into the rest of the story, much like the wicked-cool fights do, but for the most part everything else is a humdrum plodding look at this guy and his foibles. Except for the highlights, it’s incredibly slow, making 110 minutes feel like two-and-a-half hours. I shouldn’t have to look at my watch to try and figure out how much time is left in a movie like this.
The point is that Cera can go a long way in his career just based on his extreme likeability. Much like John Cusack, he is just a joy to watch, no matter the project. Most times he makes dreck into solid gold but this time it was just dreck flecked with shiny bits.
