Wednesday, August 18, 2010

I never thought I’d see a film that climaxed in a digitized kung-fu battle between Michael Cera and Jason Schwartzman.  For that matter I never thought I’d see a film that starred Michael Cera as a kung-fu master who pulls swords from his chest and battles a bevy of strapping lads and lasses for the love of one Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead).  Nor, did I ever think that a filmic adaptation of Bryan O’Malley’s hit-hipster-Americanized-homage to the world of video games and anime would ever grace the screen, or that I’d leave the theater of such an adaptation with a huge shit-eating grin plastered across my face.  Yet, that all said, I never thought that such a film would fall in the lap of one of the true geniuses working in film right now, Edgar Wright.

Wright, director of the Shaun Of The Dead and the criminally underrated Hot Fuzz, is like a Gen-X version of the Coen Brothers.  A director who’s knowledge of film and genre is near unparalleled and has no issue warping the various genres to his own masterful devices.  Yet he isn’t draw on the conventions of say Westerns and Film Noir, he’s drawing on cheap-o zombie flicks, comic books, video games, and the 1980s.  Thus the idea of a video game reference-heavy kung fu flick set in, well, Toronto amongst the hipster set seems like a film that Wright would succeed quite handily at. And with Scott Pilgrim VS The World he does, mightily.

Review - Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a self-obsessed, jobless mooch who plays in a band (Sex Bob-omb) and breaks the hearts of ladies.  When said Scott Pilgrim falls heavily in love with American ex-pat Ramona Flowers, he’s forced to face off with her seven, mystically powered, evil exes in to-the-death street fights rife with extra lives, 100-hit combos and all the fixings of your favorite light 90s video game.  At the heart though, Wright, as he always seems to do, finds a strong center that relies on his strong writing (Scott Pilgrim is one of the funniest films of the year) but also the aspiring love between Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers.  Their early-20s romance is the foundation amongst the wildness of the rest of the film, and the two young actors hold it together well.  Any one who thought Cera was a poor choice for Pilgrim will be proven wrong, as he brings a sort of curt, conceit that adds depth and, thankfully, difference to his normal form of awkwardness.

Wright, using a slew of visual effects and video game references, crafts one of the most original films of the year and the decade. A film that pulls no stops in visual madness or creativity, but somehow anchors itself with some truly hilarious set-ups and a cast of young actors (Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, inspired casting) who bring weight to what could’ve been a sort of flighty mess of visual wanking ala Speed Racer.

 

Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and the KEXP blog.  He also has his own Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.   If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his writings here at Side One: Track One then please do so here.

- Noah Sanders - -



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