I am looking forward to the generational divide that will ripple through audiences after "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World." Most likely, anyone under 25 will think this is, like, the most awesome movie ever. Meanwhile, old people with jobs, families and mortgages will probably think this is the noisiest junk they've ever witnessed.
Since I'm definitely not young enough to be this movie's target demographic, and not middle-age, I'm stuck in the center on this. I watched the movie, accepting the fact that it's not for me at all. And yet, watching it was kind of fascinating, almost like peering into the mind of the average, ADD-addled youngster this movie is targeting.
Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a jobless, 20-something Toronto slacker who plays bass in a rock band called the Sex Bob-Omb. He's causing concern among his friends over his newest companion, a flighty 17-year-old named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong).
With Pilgrim being the neurotic, serial dater he is (he's still nursing a broken heart over his last breakup), his people know it won't last long, and they're right. Enter Ramona Flowers (Rocky Mount native Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a magenta-haired dreamgirl with whom Pilgrim immediately becomes smitten.
He has to fight
Pilgrim and Flowers start to get closer, unbeknownst to poor Chau, who's more sprung on Pilgrim than a Sealy Posturepedic mattress. Unfortunately, Pilgrim is too busy getting into "Mortal Kombat"-style fights to notice this.
You see, Flowers forgot to tell Pilgrim that he must defeat her "seven evil exes" if he wants to be her boyfriend. Her exes aren't so much evil as just wholly obnoxious. They include a pompous movie star (Chris Evans - who else?), a pompous vegan bassist (a bottle-blond Brandon Routh), a pompous lesbian (Mae Whitman, aka Cera's bland girlfriend from "Arrested Development") and, finally, a pompous record exec (Jason Schwartzman, literally oozing snottiness) who holds the future of Pilgrim's band in his hands.
All of Bryan Lee O'Malley's "Pilgrim" graphic novels get crammed into one wacky, noisily surreal package. As it melds video-game action with comic-book fantasy - throwing a bunch of manic special effects, youth-friendly, pop-culture references, snarky jokes and superimposed, onomatopoeic graphics in for good measure - the movie practically overloads.
Fortunately, the movie has Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz") for a director, who already trained for this sort of hyper, pop-savvy filmmaking when he was directing the Brit sitcom "Spaced" back in the day.
As for Cera, he certainly makes for an unlikely action hero. Even when the fight sequences begin to get tedious (yes, he fights all the exes; luckily, two of the exes are twins, so he kills two birds with one stone on that one), Cera's kung-fu-fighting shtick is still quite impressive. Unfortunately, his character is also kind of a tool, a dang-near-unsympathetic twerp, which Cera seems to enjoy playing these days. Between this and "Youth in Revolt," that misfire he was in this year, it's like Cera is working on becoming the Albert Brooks of baby-faced man-children.
The bottom line
While I found "Pilgrim" to be entertaining in a from-the-outside-looking-in sort of way, it's still difficult to get behind since it kind of represents everything I hate about fanboy culture. I've never seen a movie play more blatantly and more proudly to the geek/nerd/hipster/gamer cheap seats than "Pilgrim" does. (A ticket to the movie should come with a gift certificate to Urban Outfitters, for Pete's sake!)
It's the ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy for today's young adult male: a movie where the protagonist kicks superhuman butt, has a bunch of cool, good-looking girls lust after him and gets to play in a band, all while having zero income, mooching off his friends and really dodging responsibility at every turn.
I know fans of both the book and the movie will be ready to tell me that the story is really an exaggerated study of a young man's eventual journey into adult responsibility. That may be true, but I challenge any geek/nerd/hipster/gamer who sees "Pilgrim" to say that this movie didn't hit them in all the right spots.
Like Stanley Clarke on a bass guitar, "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" will play you fanboys in ways you never dreamed were possible.
