7,000,000 points for this movie: comic KO!

Rating: 10/10 (12 August 2010)

Edgar Wright just keeps getting better as a director, and his latest offering after the good Shaun of the Dead and better Hot Fuzz is a kind of super-speed-surrealist take on young love and imagined video-game battles. It's a geek-storm of comedy, the kind of effort that we don't get too often in movies that are dictated down by committee and tested so much for laugh ratios. There are so many things that go on in a scene in this film that some of it will pass by your head. Or maybe not; maybe it's just the right tone for a combo platter of comic-book/anime/manga/8-bit-to-PS3-video-game movie that knows itself and knows its intended audience so well that it can be so POP in its sensibility. This is a super-comedy, suffused in melodramatic romance and fiery action, for people who still wonder what it's like to be surprised at the movies.
I wish I could contain my enthusiasm for the movie enough, but it's hard to do. Wright pulls off such a high-wire act, the likes of which take me back several years ago to Kill Bill Vol. 1, or to comedy masters like Mel Brooks. The filmmaker just *gets* it, how to pull off material that is nothing too new but with an original eye and perspective for what's funny. And in this story- of Scott Pilgrim, a "hipster" with a band (of course) dating a 17 year-old Catholic high school Asian girl named Knives (of course) and who falls for another hipster girl, Ramona Flowers (beautiful Mary Winstead) who dyes her hair every several days and has seven (give or take one or two) evil ex- boyfriends (and a girlfriend) to fight to the death- the intensity and energy goes hand-in-OMFG-hand with the subject matter.
But what's even more impressive, as it was also with Hot Fuzz, is how much affection Wright really has for not just his source material, but how people who dig the culture and nature of it so much. He clearly does enjoy what's hip in music, video games, clothes, hair, action movies and kung-fu fights, but also knows how to satirize it until it bleeds its own blood. And boy does he get some juicy satire here, always in the name of good fun and, indeed, some melodrama. As Scott (Michael Cera in a kind of amalgam of his on-screen persona to a perfect nth degree) goes through these evil ex's, each with their own "quirks" and super-powers, such as one being an egotistical movie-star jerk and mega- Vegan (Chris Evans and Brandon Routh respectively, also both brilliant), we see how his character does go through an arc, that it's not all just fun and games. If a video game like No More Heroes took the perfectly- confused love tale of (500) Days of Summer, it might look like this... kinda.
What it comes down to is that for everything that is familiar, even down to the coins doing their EXPLOSION on the ground after a baddie dies, or how rock bands awesomely suck so much that they become awesome again, this is shot and scored and performed like nothing else you've seen this year, or most years. Wright keeps throwing things at the audience, and knows (or hopes) they'll keep up. At the same time it never bores with its (::I snap fingers::) rhythm, and, and if a joke doesn't fly to the sky it still gives some chuckles or belly laughs. Lines are instantly quotable, and one can't wait to tell friends and others about this character or this shot or punch, or how Jason Schwartzman reacts when he swallows his gum. It's a radioactive treasure trove of romantic comedy, blazing action, random beats, well-timed reactions and physical gestures, awkward longing, and lots of kick-ass rock songs.
In other words, if you dig it, it will be the cult movie of your time. If not... move along, or FIGHT in the arena! A+