Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010, Dir: Edgar Wright)

I shouldn’t like this film. It tries far too hard to be cool and it’s basically too clever for its own good. If it was directed by a stock Hollywood director, wheeled out to join the dots on an existing piece of work (the film is based on the Scott Pilgrim comic book series), it would be a dire, dire affair. However, under the hands of the very talented Edgar Wright (Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz) it’s a very refreshing and genuinely funny comedy.

It could have been a bad move for Wright. Away from his regular collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, he could have suffered the same fate as other successful directors tempted by the Hollywood machine (see Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection for a horrible reminder of how disappointing this situation can be). It’s also refreshing to see Wright take someone else’s work and run with it – each of his previous accomplishments have been original pieces of work co-written with Pegg.

The film introduces us to the nerdish Pilgrim, rehearsing with his equally outcast punk rock band (Sex Bob-omb), and introducing his band-mates to his newly acquired Asian schoolgirl girlfriend. However, when he meets the girl of his dreams – the eye-catching Ramona Flowers – he decides to switch partners, a decision which leads him having to battle seven of Ramona’s evil exes.

As you can probably imagine, the film has one foot planted firmly in reality and the other planted a whole stride away in a weird video-game-martial-arts-comic-book fantasy world. Although cineastes not fatigued by the spectacle of martial arts infecting every corner of cinema will probably be blown away by the action, it left me feeling slightly nauseous. I’m all for a film turning a genre onto its head, but I think I’ve just seen too much of this sort of thing – as though the whole world can be solved by kung-fu. If it could, Jackie Chan would be a world leader.

Where the film really shines is in the script (again, co-written by Edgar Wright, with Michael Bacall and the writer of the comic book Brian Lee O’Malley) and the lead performance of Michael Cera in the title role. The first act, prior to the appearance of Ramona’s first evil ex, is very funny, introducing us to Scott and the way in which he looks at the world. Much like Wright’s history with Spaced, much of the esoteric humour is aimed at video-game counter-culture, with a personal favourite being a dream sequence set to the princess’ descending theme from the Zelda games.

After this, the next instalment in Wright’s Blood & Ice Cream trilogy is a must see...