Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) Movie Review

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) Movie Review

I’m surprised I didn’t see this movie earlier than I did, to be honest. It’s a fairly popular, PG-13 rated, action comedy movie with science fiction elements. I’ve seen lots of movies that would fit that category, but for some reason, I skipped over Scott Pilgrim vs. the World until now. Edgar Wright, the movie’s director, wasn’t new to me. And neither were most of the major cast members (which I didn’t realize included Bill Hader until the credits rolled!), but I guess there are just still some films that, for whatever reason, I haven’t seen (other examples include Titanic, the Back to the Future sequels, and Inception). But now I can scratch this movie off my watchlist. I’m also happy to say that I very much enjoyed it, maybe a little more than I thought I would. It has obvious video game-consumer appeal, which didn’t speak to me much at all. I am not a gamer by any means. However, I could still appreciate that part of the movie, plus there were lots of other things I liked about it.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is about Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), a 22-year-old member of a mediocre rock band called Sex Bomb-Omb (to quote the great Kenan Thompson: “Bad name!”) who starts out the film by dating a 17-year-old Chinese girl named Knives (Ellen Wong) (to quote the great Kenan Thompson: “Bad name!”). While controversial among Scott’s friends, his relationship with Knives goes well until he meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a “hardcore” skater punk girl at a party. Instantly his goal is to go out with her, and literally the rest of the movie is about his quest to do just that. To do this, Scott must defeat all seven of Ramona’s exes (Satya Bhabha, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Mae Whitman, Keita Saitou, Shôta Saitô, and Jason Schwartzman) in video game-style physical fights. After he does this, Scott can finally be with Ramona in peace.

I enjoyed Scott Pilgrim for several reasons. First of all, its sense of humor is fresh and fun. The characters are all awkward and weird in different ways, and watching them interact is a delight. One of my favorite characters is Wallace (Kieran Culkin), Scott’s loudmouth roommate, who had the potential to be annoying but isn’t. There’s also Julie (Aubrey Plaza), the perpetual downer, who, as explained by the movie itself, has “issues.” The movie is quite silly and somewhat trippy. While kinda all over the place, Scott Pilgrim manages to not get bogged down in the vast amount of characters or subplots. Instead, it has a lightweight and carefree attitude that just really resonated with me when I watched it. I like this movie a lot now. As of January 3, 2019, it is my favorite movie that I have seen in 2019. The cinematography is also excellent, and the action scenes are very well-made and well-filmed. They really make you feel like you’re inside a video game. The script is also very funny. The dialogue is blunt and to-the-point, dryly ridiculous yet realistic. They say that movie characters aren’t supposed to talk like they do in real life, but in Scott Pilgrim, that rule is broken and it works as one of the film’s advantages. The movie is beyond real-life circumstances but doesn’t exactly fit into science fiction or fantasy categories. In the end, it’s a witty, genre-bending comedy for weirdos to enjoy. But it’s not hard to understand – most people should be able to relate to it on some level or another.

While Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is an excellent movie, there are some small complaints I have. My main complaint is that there are many times when it is hard to tell if something is really happening or not. Sometimes something we think is really happening isn’t, and vice versa. I usually don’t mind it when movies are trippy; in fact, sometimes that’s actually a fun quality. Movies like Fight Club and The Matrix are all over the place with reality and non-reality, and it works well. But here it just confused me a little bit, and I’m sure there would be others who would be confused as well. It’s whatever, though. That’s really my only complaint, honestly.

Safety Chart:

Violence: 4/10 - Unrealistic, video game-style fights. Swords and dragons and stuff. There’s not any blood or anything.

Language: 3/10 - Not much strong language.

Drinking/Smoking: 3/10 - Scott drinks a little bit (he’s 22 so it’s OK).

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a movie you’ll enjoy very much if you like comedies, video games, comic books, or teen movies. Even if you’re not a big video game nerd (for example, I don’t even own a PS4 or an XBox), chances are you’ll still have fun seeing it. If you’re really difficult to please and take everything seriously, maybe this isn’t the movie for you. If that description doesn’t match you, then, yeah, I would recommend this film. I’m going to give it an A as a grade. I’ll be looking forward to seeing Scott Pilgrim again sometime.