So we had to come to this point, where the Cap'n is working on his year-end roundup of films, when the time came to say "am I going to watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World or not?" When it came down to it, and when I took the film over to the Cranpire's, we couldn't come up with a compelling enough reason NOT to watch the movie. Going in, I tried as hard as possible to watch the film on its own merits and mentally divorce myself from its acolytes, which I'm actually pretty good at. I assumed that this review would either be a) the Cap'n gloating in the wake of a movie he hated, or b) the Cap'n eating some serious crow.
What happened instead is that neither is the case. I think that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is wildly misrepresented as something it isn't (exactly), and while I find the film to be technically engaging with some fine supporting performances, my central problem with the film itself is less about being annoyed by how "hip" it is and more about not caring about the lead characters.
Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a 22 year old layabout dating 17 year old Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) as a means of getting over being dumped by Envy Adams (Brie Larson). Scott is the bassist in a band called the Sex Bob-ombs with Stephen Stills (Mark Webber), Kim Pine (Alison Pill) - another ex-girlfriend - and hanger-around and sometimes back-up bassist Young Neil (Johnny Simmons). He shares a bed with roommate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin), who has a habit of stealing boys away from Scott's sister Stacy (Anna Kendrick), and Wallace, Stacy, and Julie Powers (Aubrey Plaza) all disapprove of the ambition-less Pilgrim's under-aged rebound relationship.Things change when Scott has a dream about Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and then meets her at a party. Despite the fact that none of his usual pick up lines seem to work on the perpetually aloof, impulsive Flowers, he somehow wins her over enough to fall in the bad graces of her League of Seven Evil Exes, headed up by Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman). Scott must defeat of each of Ramona's evil exes: Mathew Patel (Satya Bhabha), Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman), and the Katayanagi twins - Kyle (Keita Saito) and Ken (Shota Saito). In the process, Scott needs to figure out what he wants to do with his life, how to break up with Knives, and if he can survive dating Ramona*.
To describe Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as a "game changer" or "next level shit" actually does the film a great disservice. It's an open invitation for cynics to say "oh yeah?" and sharpen their blades in order to definitively prove its ardent supporters' claims erroneous, but beyond that, the hyperbole robs the film of what it actually is: a very well made synthesis of stylistic and narrative story-telling tricks from a clearly talented young director**. Edgar Wright may not be operating from a wholly unprecedented playbook - as some have claimed - but it doesn't mean he hasn't put together a visually engrossing, fresh-feeling film just because overenthusiastic fans rushed to crown Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as the next wave of filmmaking.
The audience reaction was actually pretty easy to take out of the equation, in part because my problems with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World centered around Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers almost exclusively. In short, I'm not really sure why I should care about either of these characters: Scott is, at best, an admittedly lazy, sort of skeezy user of women who provides his friends nothing, not even companionship. The characters that don't already hate him (like Julie and Kim) seem to simply tolerate him, and despite the fact that he openly admits to cheating on Knives and Ramona, he somehow gets a pass without any kind of character arc. (I should point out that this is not a criticism of Michael Cera, who plays the role well, but the character he's playing. The same applies to Mary Elizabeth Winstead - who I genuinely didn't recognize, despite having seen her in Death Proof and Live Free or Die Hard - below).
Now, this is not to say Ramona Flowers is any better: she's perpetually annoyed and guarded, even when she seems interested in Scott she behaves as though he ought to know the Seven Evil Exes are coming and that - save for the fight with Roxy - she's not going to do anything about it. She abandons Scott, (justifiably) breaks up with him, and tries to duck out in the end after Pilgrim murders her former lovers (which, when one looks at what's really happening here, is precisely the case). If the idea was to have two characters you don't like just barely trying to have a relationship they can bail out on at any time, then okay, but I really don't know why I should be invested in the film.
On the other hand, I did enjoy almost all of the supporting cast, particularly Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Alison Pill, and Mark Webber. Even the one note characters, like Anna Kendrick's perpetually indignant Stacey or Aubrey Plaza's eternally pissed Julie, make some impression. Brandon Routh would steal the show as Todd Ingram, the super-powered Vegan bassist of Envy's band The Clash at Demonhead, were it not for two inspired cameos that close out his fight scene (more on that later). Even Schwartzman, who essentially plays "sleazy" with a dash of evil, is a credible "Boss" for Pilgrim to defeat. The "video game" component of the film introduces the villains at an even keel and Wright keeps the film from feeling episodic.
On some level, I can understand how the film's most vocal champions (other than Harry Knowles, who really ought to know better) aren't aware of the numerous cinematic and cultural precedents being used - and I must add, expertly - by Wright in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The film, from its 8-Bit Universal logo opening to its "extra life" final act, is designed to appeal to a specific type of fan: twenty-to-early-thirty-somethings raised on video game consoles*** who listen to indie rock and read comics that dissect the superhero comic books their older brothers read. There's some overlap with film geeks, but it's easy to see how some of these "ground breaking" techniques were mistaken as new.
For example, I suppose most of Scott Pilgrim's audience didn't know that hip hop videos have been arbitrarily shifting aspect ratios for the last five years or so, or the dialogue bridges from scene to scene are easily recognizable in films like Breathless or Singles. Sound bridges have been around even longer, and the on-screen title card / descriptive elements were prominently on display as recently as Fight Club (compare the Scott's apartment layout to the narrator's "catalog" apartment sequence, just for starters). Still, to be fair, I'll give most viewers the benefit of the doubt and assume they went in knowing as much about film history as Knives Chau does about music halfway through the film.
Surprisingly, I'm not as annoyed by the myriad of video game, film, and "hip" music references as I'd expected to be. For example, the Sex Bob-ombs (get it? it's like Tom Jones' "Sex Bomb" but with the Super Mario Brothers Bob-ombs) didn't really bother me, or the fact that characters are named Stephen Stills and Neil Young (oh wait, that's Young Neil; my bad). It's so commonplace in the world of Scott Pilgrim that one eventually tolerates their omnipresence, and occasionally it's kind of clever: for example, I chuckled at the Ninja Ninja Revolution arcade game and laughed out loud when Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins, Jr. appeared as the "Vegan Police" to strip Todd of his Vegan status. Wright doesn't lay on the referencing in such a thick way that it's irritating, and small jokes like a "Gloom Rock" and "Sad Music" section in the record store, or the use of the Seinfeld "theme" elicit a grin.
In the end, I can't say that I loved Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I'm not even sure I liked it yet. I appreciate what Edgar Wright accomplished technically and stylistically, and the momentum of the film keeps the nearly two hour running time brisk. I enjoyed many of the supporting cast, didn't feel one way or the other about the music or myriad of references, and don't regret seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. the World in total. However, I just can't get past the fact that the primary love story is strained at best and wholly unbelievable at worst. Scott and Ramona a simply characters that didn't appeal to me, and regardless of the actors' best efforts, it's hard to really get behind a film when you just don't care.
That's too bad, because I would like to listen to one of the always entertaining Wright commentary tracks, but I'm not positive I'll ever watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World again. At least I didn't like the film on its own merits rather than its over-the-top (and honestly, foolish sounding) fan base. Do your homework, kids, and I suspect you'll still like the movie for what it is, but please stop trying to sell the world a different film than what's there; I think we might be more inclined to "take your word for it" that way.
* There are reviews that claim the film's breathless exposition may be too much for some audience members to follow, which I honestly don't understand. There's nothing difficult about following the characters introduced and how they relate to each other, and several of them are so broadly sketched that it's quite simple to keep up with them after long periods of time.
** I would like to add, at this point, that much of what Edgar Wright is praised for in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World are the same things Quentin Tarantino is constantly derided for by the same people - cobbled together imagery from other sources, intertextuality, incessant homage, and levels of self-reflexivity that border on parodic.
*** Video Game Disclaimer: the Cap'n was not involved in the "console generation," save for visits to friends' houses. Other than my brother's Game Boy, we never had a game system in the house until I was in college, when I brought home a Nintendo 64. The nostalgic love for all things Nintendo and Sega are things I can appreciate, but don't necessarily share.
1 comment:
A fantabulous, crabulous review, touching on damn near every problem I had with it. Of course, though, the FanBoyGeekery still needled me when I saw it, compelling me to dislike it actively, and not what it deserved from me - a chaotic neutral.
I'm also glad you brought up the Tarantino angle, even if just footnoted: this is just one of the many grunt-inducers when folks started going gaga over Scott Pilgrim etcetera. Critical double standards are long-remembered.
And I was never a huge gamer / comic-book reader / etc, so that level was completely lost on me. Sure, I caught the references, as cheap and topical as they were. Impelling and evincing any sort of emotional resonance? No sirree.
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