Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Although it originated as graphic novels by Brian Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World plays much like a living video game. Filled with a basic plot and beyond basic visuals, this film is one worth waiting all summer for.

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a Toronto slacker who plays bass in a band, once dated singer “Envy” Adams (Brie Larson) and now dates High Schooler Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). His precious little life is disrupted when rollerblading New Yorker Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) comes in. He ends up dating her, leaving poor Knives behind.

Ramona’s seven previous romances, led by insidious record producer Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman) assemble into “The League of Evil Exes,” whose members come one at a time to try to kill Scott for daring to win Ramona’s attentions. Their duels involve Scott and his rivals momentarily showing off superhuman abilities that don’t seem out-of-place in their world. Defeated enemies even turn into piles of coins- and no one dares question that.

Its director and co-Writer, Edgar Wright superbly stages the fights with the choreography of musical numbers. The first ex, fireball throwing Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha), even has a catchy musical number in his scene. End result is action scenes done well by a combination of actors and FX.

The cast is just great, especially the actors playing the exes, who steal their scenes. Chris Evans as jock movie star Lucas Lee and Brandon Routh as psychic Vegan rock star Todd Ingram are the highlights of the evil league. Kieran Culkin also steals scenes wonderfully as Scott’s sarcastic gay roommate Wallace, as does Anna Kendrick as Scott’s Sister Stacey.

This film has to be seen to be believed. It embraces comic bookish action, video game visuals and a decent romance story (when one stops to think about it). If there’s any flaw, then it’s an overload of visuals. In the end, however, that shouldn’t kill the overall experience of this unique picture.