Two Great Leads Make the Film

Rating: Null/10 (5 February 2011)

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Trying to get over a girl dumping him, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) dumps his teenage girlfriend in order to go out with the beautiful Ramona Flowers (Mary Winstead). Scott quickly falls in love with her but learns that he must destroy her seven evil ex-boyfriends before he can fully have her. I'm going to be incredibly honest upfront and admit that this movie simply wasn't for me. I'm not a gamer. I'm not into comics. There's really nothing in this film that I'm into so it's easy to see why my biggest problem was connecting with the film. There's no question that it features some very good performance, the direction is very good and the visual style is wonderful but at the end of the day you must connect with a film and I simply didn't do that here. As I said, there are a lot of very good things in this movie and I especially liked the cast. Cera is the most unlikely superhero in the history of superheroes but he perfectly sells the character and makes you like and care for him. I thought that shyness he uses early on with the girls was quite charming and I thought he made himself believable once the action started. Winstead clearly steals the film as Ramona since she's certainly easy on the eyes and she comes across so lovable that you can't help but think anyone would be willing to fight seven ex-boyfriends to get with her. The supporting players include a nice performance by Kieran Culkin as Cera's gay roommate and I really enjoyed Ellen Wong as the teenage girlfriend. There were a couple classic moments and one comes when both girlfriends show up at a concert to see Scott and the way the connection is shown between the three characters was simply priceless. Another terrific spoof is when Scott must fight one of th ex's who just happens to be a famous action star now. Throughout the movie there are graphics shown on screen just like you'd see in a comic book and many of them were rather smart and funny. After saying all these positive things you'd expect to see a higher rating but this film simply wasn't made for me. If you're a fan of anything that happens in this film (games, comics) or you're familiar with the graphic novels then I'm sure you'd see this as a masterpiece. As for me, it was just way too long for my liking, although I can at least admire what they were going for.