Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. (15.)
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Starring Michael Cera, Mary Elisabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman. 112 mins.
It’s billed as the new film from Edgar Wright, the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but more to the point, it’s the latest film by the man who directed Spaced. Like that seminal Channel 4 comedy, Scott Pilgrim is a simple relationship comedy that has been loaded up with pop cultural references. And if you were a fan of Spaced, Scott Pilgrim may feel like an episode that leaves you a little adrift, where you don’t get most of the references.
I’d like to think I was bigger than this but I kind of resent Wright’s move to Hollywood and his new film. I don’t want to stifle a man’s ambition but as one of the few people who could make an unselfconscious British movie, one that you didn’t have to um and ah and make allowances for, he was too important to lose. We really should have confiscated his passport or something. Also he seems to have managed to skip back a generation; now this thirtysomething is down with the kids.
Jobless, bass playing waster Pilgrim (Cera) is bewitched by new girl in Toronto Ramona (Winstead) but before they have even gone out together he finds himself challenged to a duel to the death by an ex-boyfriend. To win her he will have to defeat in combat all seven of her evil exes.
It is based on a graphic novel, and Wright’s way of adapting it is to unleash the kind of bombastic visual overload not seen since Natural Born Killers. Part Sin City, part 60s TV Batman, it creates it very own comic book universe. But it can be a difficult one to get your head round with its disconcerting mix of perpetual adolescents fretting about their love lives and epic battles done in the style of game console beat ‘em ups.
Wright suggests we think of these fight sequences as like the big numbers in a screen musical which is a nice analogy but doesn’t quite convince. These are after all the kind of characters we once called slackers - when did slackers get to be so frantic? This whole film is like a trailer for itself.
I laughed a lot and would say I enjoyed it but not as much as I hoped to. It’s funny but not hilarious, clever without being dazzling and sweet without ever touching your heart. If you get it, you’ll love it. Those that don’t will find it exhausting.
There something a little depressing about the premise. In this age of total war, it presents a vision of a generation trapped in an endless cycle of arbitrary life and death conflicts which they pursue rather apathetically. It made me feel fantastically old and out of touch, yet happy to be so.
Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. (15.)
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Starring Michael Cera, Mary Elisabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman. 112 mins.
It’s billed as the new film from Edgar Wright, the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but more to the point, it’s the latest film by the man who directed Spaced. Like that seminal Channel 4 comedy, Scott Pilgrim is a simple relationship comedy that has been loaded up with pop cultural references. And if you were a fan of Spaced, Scott Pilgrim may feel like an episode that leaves you a little adrift, where you don’t get most of the references.
I’d like to think I was bigger than this but I kind of resent Wright’s move to Hollywood and his new film. I don’t want to stifle a man’s ambition but as one of the few people who could make an unselfconscious British movie, one that you didn’t have to um and ah and make allowances for, he was too important to lose. We really should have confiscated his passport or something. Also he seems to have managed to skip back a generation; now this thirtysomething is down with the kids.
Jobless, bass playing waster Pilgrim (Cera) is bewitched by new girl in Toronto Ramona (Winstead) but before they have even gone out together he finds himself challenged to a duel to the death by an ex-boyfriend. To win her he will have to defeat in combat all seven of her evil exes.
It is based on a graphic novel, and Wright’s way of adapting it is to unleash the kind of bombastic visual overload not seen since Natural Born Killers. Part Sin City, part 60s TV Batman, it creates it very own comic book universe. But it can be a difficult one to get your head round with its disconcerting mix of perpetual adolescents fretting about their love lives and epic battles done in the style of game console beat ‘em ups.
Wright suggests we think of these fight sequences as like the big numbers in a screen musical which is a nice analogy but doesn’t quite convince. These are after all the kind of characters we once called slackers - when did slackers get to be so frantic? This whole film is like a trailer for itself.
I laughed a lot and would say I enjoyed it but not as much as I hoped to. It’s funny but not hilarious, clever without being dazzling and sweet without ever touching your heart. If you get it, you’ll love it. Those that don’t will find it exhausting.
There something a little depressing about the premise. In this age of total war, it presents a vision of a generation trapped in an endless cycle of arbitrary life and death conflicts which they pursue rather apathetically. It made me feel fantastically old and out of touch, yet happy to be so.
