A nice little comedy if it wasn't so insufferably postmodern

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2011)

Scott Pilgrim vs The World, which I hadn't seen until now, despite ravings from my fellow dweebs.
Firstly, i'm not a gamer, but I could appreciate the references from having played games on the SNES and Playstation As a film, I found the acting to be good, and Chris Evans, Thomas Jane (the 'vegan policeman') and Brandon Routh were all particularly funny, but overall the film was too dependent on self-conscious geek service and postmodern gimmickry to make it a truly decent film. If anything, many adults would've been distracted from the story by the constant smugness of the self-reflexivity- A girl's face becomes an emoticon, and a swearing character has a black 'censor' box over her mouth, only to be asked about it by the eponymous hero.
It sailed close to the wind with regards to acknowledging its roots in a comic and nearly fell to the same indulgent trap of pretentiousness as Sin City - over-stylised and overly reverential to the original format, thus appearing static and quite dull. As it is, it gets away with just being silly and playful, although the dialogue is of the egregious Whedon School of screen writing - flippant and far too studied to be believed; as if a single voice were engaged in a witty repartee with itself, as is usually the case with Tarantino, Whedon and the slew of imitators such as Orci and Kurtzman. I winced when the female drummer said 'Your bad was saying 'my Bad'', when that's the kind of dialogue the film uses throughout.
Overall, quite a mixed bag. 2.5/5