The Chuck Norris story (Part I: The early years)

Rating: 8/10 (24 August 2010)

An entertaining movie that can be interpreted as a biography of Chuck Norris in his early twenties. Presumably Chuck was taking lots of drugs at that time because if he saw this movie now he'd be thinking to himself "Did that happen to me or did I dream it?".
The unbridled machismo glimpsed in star Michael Cera's role in "Juno" is brought to fruition here. You really do believe that he is Chuck Norris...the pain...the rage...the dread that he will go berko on you...and maybe teabag you.
Speaking of Juno...if you thought that that could have been a really good movie...if it had kick-boxing, then this movie will be your cup of tea.
Anyway, in this movie Scott Pilgrim/young Chuck Norris is "between jobs" and spends his (nothing but) spare time in his band "Sex Bob-Omb", where he plays bass guitar. The more savvy reader will have noted the Buddhist chant pun in the band's name. This movie does have a lot of music in it. And it's interesting to listen to...sort of garage-punk. Beck Hansen wrote much of the music and it's fine in its own right.
So anyway, Scott/young Chuck has found himself a schoolgirl girlfriend, but complications ensue when he meets Ramona Flowers/young Edna Everage. Dilemma. If Scott/young Chuck want to be with Ramona/young Edna, he has to fight a series of ex-boyfriends of Ramona/young Edna. The fight scenes are modelled on video games and is where Scott/young Chuck gets to amp up the machismo and kick-boxing to 11.74.
Some of the scenes are 'cute'...i.e. you might see one conversation between people played out in different places over different periods of time. It's sort of dream like in that way.
I'm not sure that this movie will have a lot of repeat viewing value in a short space of time, but it was entertaining first up and would be worth revisiting after a spell.
It's funny, cute and comically violent. Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona really nails the Edna Everage look...when Edna was in her prime. And who knew young Chuck Norris wrote love songs and sang them to his woman...on acoustic guitar? Fans of Seinfeld might like this too...remember that episode where George plays Frogger for real? This movie is like that. And as in Seinfeld, you get a lot of fun peripheral characters...like Scott/young Chuck's gay room-mate.