Sgt. Angle reporting for duty!

Welcome back to another sensory blasting Cinegasm!

Today, I’m pre-empting the actual release of a film by two weeks and handing you a write-up/review NOW! That film is, of course, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

Starring Michael Cera as the titular Pilgrim, Edgar Wright’s third feature film is a hilarious romp, a steady marathon of sight gags, slapstick comedy, hard-hitting action and giddy romance. Music and sound effects fly at the audience with breakneck speed while we sail through each sequence of comedy and action, as Pilgrim fends off each of seven evil exes of the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers.

The film opens on Scott Pilgrim’s routine existence as a twenty-something slacker who doesn’t want to leave his twenties and enter the “real world” of responsibility. He’s dating a high school girl (Knives Chau), much to the disapproval of his band mates, his sister (Anna Kendrick) and his best friend and gay roommate, Wallace (Kieran Culkin — more on him in a minute). Then, Scott dreams of a girl with pink hair, and soon he meets her in reality.

Thus, he pursues the girl of his dreams, the woman he’s been waiting for who will rescue him from an uncertain spiral of “not growing up;” the Wendy to his Peter Pan. But before they can grow old together, before they can even call themselves a couple, Scott must defeat her seven evil exes. And by defeat, I mean pulverize, pound, punch, kick, outwit, or slice with a sword and turn into a pile of coins, a la any Nintendo game you can remember.

What ultimately makes SPvsTW a grade-A perfect fit for Edgar Wright’s sensibilities is the breakneck speed of meshing styles — the over-the-top fights, the sight gags and jokes for the sake of the joke. The quick double-take of the camera back to a character without a phone in his hand only to reveal the phone was there the whole time. The sit-com vibe of the living arrangement of Scott and his roommate, as well as the on-the-nose timing of “I hope she’ll call” combined with the actual ringing of the phone, as well as the word “RIIIINNNGG” streaming up from the phone itself.

The movie takes advantage of all of our visual and aural senses and provides an audience experience that is hard to forget, and easy to recommend. This is a movie that defines why we GO to the movies.

Consider the pacing: Not only does Michael Cera land his dry humor and uncertain personality traits in every single scene, but just when the film can fall into the territory of cliched schmaltz, or typical rom-com fare, an unexpected joke like “You had a sexy faze?” when talking about lesbians, or Jason Schwartzman’s simple act of falling into a limo while waving bring a warm sheet of laughter into the air, helping the balloon of action floating above our eager eyes

I can already see some complaints coming forward about this movie: There’s nothing to care about, the characters are self-centered and I don’t care if they get together or not. To that I say, BULLY. There is a disconnect with even our lead character because there has to be. In order to sink into the world of the story and “let it happen” as is, we need to distance ourselves from our lead — much like a videogame (and the comparisons between Scott Pilgrim and videogames is undeniable), where a character can be seen as no more than a cartoon, Cera’s Pilgrim is no more than a character in a story. How you relate to him or the people who inhabit his world is up to you, but in the end, realize that he’s chasing the literal girl of his dreams. When you see something you want and think you should have, you’ll do anything for it — even if those actions defy the logical world you’ve built around yourself.

The film is too full of sensory overload and fight scenes are unrealistic. Sure, the choreography of the fights could’ve been more spot on in the world of any other action movie, but what do you want from a movie that shows us a “pee bar” when our character goes to the bathroom, or there’s a dude who can recognize a person based on a scraggly drawing with no distinct characteristics? Let it fly and stay with the flow of the movie — the character’s determination and goal. Ultimately, Pilgrim wants to end up with Ramona Flowers.  He needs to prove to himself that he is his own man and can fend for himself.

Throughout the movie, his roommate, Wallace, starts to push Scott away; his sister only talks to him so she can talk about him; his bandmates want a record deal more than the time spent playing together — they want REAL results. Scott is slowly becoming a man in the real world, on his own and fighting just to stay afloat. All of this is personified in his cartoonish/videogame struggles for Ramona Flowers, a nomad, a girls who literally rollerskates in and out of scenes and who changes her hair on a whim, without a second thought. Scott is transitioning from one way of life to the next. Who knows what awaits him on the other side of that transitional door.

The supporting cast is delicious all around, eating up their scenes but no one overstepping their bounds and characters — characters who, against all logic for a cast this large, stand out beyond typical supporting fare and become personalities in their own right.

Kieran Culkin is awesomely hilarious as Wallace, Pilgrim’s gay roommate. Culkin proves, once again, that he is an under-utilized performer in the world of film. Hollywood, please take note of his comic timing and scene-stealing screen presence. Ellen Wong manages to bring a strong sense of growth and humanity to the otherwise cartoonish Knives Chau. Mary Elizabeth Winstead maintains an air of cool calm and sometimes obnoxious devil may care attitude that can, in moments, hurt our respect for her Ramona Flowers. Anna Kendrick is spot on as the gossipy sister to Scott Pilgrim.

And the League of Exes (Chris Evans, Satya Bhabha, Mae Whitman, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman, Ken and  Kyle Katayanagi) are all individual and stand out, even sometimes with only a few minutes before our eyes (Brandon Routh has proven, in this role, that he has unexpected comedic timing, and in my mind he has earned the right to return to Superman any day of the week).

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is the movie we’ve been waiting for from Edgar Wright. With Shaun of the Dead, he gave us a smart and comical look at the zombie and horror genres; with Hot Fuzz, he geniusly turned a comical parody of American action films into a solid cop movie of its’ own right. Scott Pilgrim is the extension of Wright’s brilliant series Spaced, which piled on pop culture references in a world where twentysomethings denied the fact that they had to grow up eventually. In this movie, Wright finally gets to parlay his talents from the small screen world into feature films, and blossoms wonderfully. (for those interested in exploring more of “The Wright Stuff”, you can hit his blog Edgar Wright Here.

Five out of Five Rifle Salutes.

The film began filming in March 2009, and every day of filming Wright uploaded a photo from the set, or a new cast member, mostly hidden, like these below:

At Ease!

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle.