Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Honestly, I liked it a lot. I know the review may sound somewhat suspect, but bear in mind I've been reading a month's worth of sloppy-kiss reviews from critics who I swear on my life called it incredibly important. Nothing like overselling the shit out of something you love. I don't blame them, I just don't all the way agree. It's a great movie, it is. I'll probably see it again on video, maybe even own it. I just don't, you know, want to take it back behind the school and get it pregnant, to borrow a Tracy Jordan expression. Here's the review.

It’s Hipster to Care
Scott Pilgrim vs the World loves fights and fights for love


If an 8-bit video game got an indie romantic comedy pregnant, Scott Pilgrim vs the World would be their offspring: whiney but infinitely lovable. Spastically working the modern zeitgeist like a stripper’s pole, SPVTW alternates between slapping hipsters in the face and giving them a sexytime lap dance. Nowhere near as groundbreaking as declaimed by internet-based critics, who just-so-happen to fall into the target demographic, it is an inarguable visual romp, a giddy seizure that’s almost as endearing as it thinks it is.

Working from the graphic novels by Brian Lee O’Malley, screenwriter Michael Bacall and writer/director Edgar Wright just assume we’ll like Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), presumably because he has poofy hair and familiar neuroses, despite giving us no real reason to do so. Although 22, Scott is dating a 17-year-old named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), a chaste union lamented by his sardonic gay roommate, Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin), and Scott’s sister, Stacey (Anna Kendrick). When he falls for Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the dreamiest, most manically pixied of all manic pixie dream girls, she somehow indulges the whelp, a decision made befuddling by Cera’s resplendent asexuality.

The insanity dial on the reality amp is turned to 11 when Scott must fight Ramona’s seven evil exes, “Street Fighter” style. These include guyliner-enthusiast Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha), skateboarder-turned-movie-star Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), bicurious-enabler Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman), vegan-rock-god Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), electronica-dispensing twins Kyle (Keita Saitou) and Ken Katayanagi (Shota Saito) and the love kingpin Gideon (Jason Schwartzman). With nearly every scene evolving into a split-screen brawl, complete with animated “smacks” and “KOs” flying every which way, it’s easier to develop epilepsy than boredom.

Wright’s “screw it, let’s put it in there” direction is so hyper as to obscure issues like Cera’s increasingly grating self-imitation and Wallace’s stereotypical gay partner switching. Winstead does the best acting work here, somehow making her droll, insane-baggage-toting, anime-eyed love interest captivating. If only we could believe she’d be curious about Cera’s boy parts.

What holds it all together is delightful fight choreography performed by hipsters combined with a wink-and-nod awareness, like Todd being granted superpowers due to his vegan lifestyle, which makes him “better than you.” Perhaps it’s that SPVTW too accurately channels modern youth, with all its arrogance, that soils it a bit. Nonetheless, you can’t resist a film that sports a bitchin’ soundtrack, young love and bad guys who turn into a pile of coins when you punch their heads off.

Grade = B+

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Michael Cera will kick your ass

I'm about to be shunned by two groups: (1) people who don't really like or read comics at all, although those people probably don't read this blog with frequency, and (2) people who really love and read comics all the time. I've never read the "Scott Pilgrim" graphic novels. I always meant to, but I'm a lazy bastard with limited financial resources, so it never happened. That said, I have been looking forward to the film adaptation with great enthusiasm, most notably because director Edgar Wright has yet to make a bad movie. Hell, he has yet to make an average movie. The buzz surrounding the film has been somewhat legendary, with well-known directors making it known that they'd totally make sexytime with the movie if it were a person. The biggest thing I heard was that it was "groundbreaking" in its use of playful violence. Well, part of the wait is over...here is the trailer.



Things I loved:

The fake-out "this is another Michael Cera indie-romance-love-movie where hipsters you kind of hate make out."
The smokin' hot Mary Elizabeth Winstead with her inexplicably hot multicolored hair.
The use of comic book words like WHAP that haven't been displayed like this since the original "Batman" television series.
The music, which I believe is new Beck.

Things I'm not so in love with:

Michael Cera. I'm still pissed about Year One. Asshole.
The tone of the acting isn't quite clear yet, but they need to be quite serious and not self-aware. The film will collapse if it's all wink-and-noddy.

I'm excited, I really am. I think it looks like a total blast, but it does not look "revolutionary." This looks like a fun version of Sin City. I don't want it to sound like I'm bagging on it, I'm not. I'll be there opening weekend if only because I love me some Edgar Wright...but as we learned from Avatar, let's not be saying "game changer" when we mean "good movie." It looks good. The teaser teased me appropriately.

Movie Review: Paper Heart

Well, you know, they can't all be winners. Paper Heart was a little movie I thought had a chance to be quite good. Instead, it's a little movie that is just that: it has little actual spark, little substance, and little laughs. Also, I'm now worried for this woman:



She may well be mentally challenged in some way but I'm afraid people believe it to be an act. We may need to stage an intervention. At any rate, here's the review.

Que Cera, Cera?
Paper Heart and the mystery of Michael Cera

The degree to which you enjoy Paper Heart depends on whether you wish to deliver harm or hugs to its lead, Charlyne Yi, whose on-screen persona is basically that of a hipster Forrest Gump. Writer/director Nick Jasenovec’s film is a mash-up of a documentary and a fictional romantic comedy filtered through a not-quite-as-charming-as-he-thinks lens of quirk, the result of which is the equivalent of a clichéd Valentine’s card written by Kings of Leon. Paper Heart is a sometimes endearing, often trite and ultimately inconsequential endeavor that feels like the sort that would be lauded as genius if Jasenovec was in his teens.

The concept is that Yi, whose dimples have their own area code, doesn’t believe in and has never been in love. This cloyingly convenient premise leads to Jasenovec’s proposal that Yi travel around the country (mostly in the southern Midwest) and talk to random people, philosophers, scientists and other assorted odd folks to better understand what love is. The fictional element emerges when Yi meets real-life boyfriend, Michael Cera, who continues to defend his crown as the king of charming awkwardness. Interspliced between segments animated with paper-and-fabric puppets re-enacting the sticky-sweet stories told by the people Yi interviews, Cera and Yi engage in a bizarre reimagined version of their actual courtship, jam-packed with all of your favorite romantic comedy clichés, including the “meet cute,” the “convenient misunderstanding” and the “what are you doing here on my porch” reunion.

It’s easy to see where Jasenovec, who appears on camera almost as much as Yi or Cera, believed that he and Yi were being clever. That they chose to basically attempt to shake-up the rom-com format by shattering the fourth wall is well-intentioned if not well-executed. The problem is primarily two-fold: the interviewees are as spectacularly ordinary as the interviewer is nutty, and the whole Cera and Yi courtship feels like spying on the two kids from high-school you thought would be alone forever while they try to practice making out. Their “first-kiss” follows a grocery shopping excursion that feels like an outtake from I Am Sam.

In fact, the only time during the film when Yi seems at home is when she questions children on a playground, which is easily the most entertaining segment. The hygiene-challenged, self-described musician/comedian seems most comfortable talking about cooties. Paper Heart’s entire premise is that Yi is watchable, a premise that is not automatically bankable.

Look, there is nothing wrong with a tiny independent film that blends docu-style with romantic truisms. It just isn’t anywhere near as “special” as its lead seems to be. The lingering question from the movie has nothing to do with whether Yi is capable of love or some new definition of that emotion; it mostly has to do with Michael Cera. Is he really the physical incarnate of geek chic or has he become so submerged in his craft that even he no longer knows where his persona stops and his actual person begins? Sadly, we may never know.

Grade - C