A simple story.. boy meets girl.. boy must defeat 7 evil exes

Rating: 9/10 (23 March 2011)

"Not so long ago...in the mysterious land...Of Toronto Canada...Scott Pilgrim was dating a high schooler..." This is a fairly innocuous opening for a movie that, if you like it, has the capacity to leave you very emotionally wrung out.
The plot of this movie is not exactly simple, but not incomprehensible either. Scott Pilgrim is dating Knives Chou, a Chinese high-school girl in an attempt to escape his loneliness following a brutal breakup. Scott is a slacker who lives with his "cool gay roommate" just across the street from his childhood home and is in a band called Sex Bob-omb which is involved in The Toronto Battle of the Bands. Things are going fairly well until Life gets more complicated when Scott meets his (literal) dream girl Ramona and gets more and more entangled in a web of her baggage and his own.
About a half-hour into this movie Scott discovers he must defeat Ramona's seven evil exes and thus begins a strange odyssey across a video game landscape while also juggling his band, Knives, Ramona and the complexities of his own big ex showing up in the middle of it all.
After seeing this movie several times and seeing such bitterness on the message boards I can see how it might be hard for the average movie hunter to figure out whether they should spend their time here. The best way I can think of to guide the average moviegoer is through a series of negations. Number one: If you think the Legend of Zelda is an autobiography of the author of The Great Gatsby, then you may want to skip this one. Two, If you think that I am about to spell Mortal Kombat wrong then you may want to stay clear. Three, if you have trouble with movies that think realism is something that happens to other movies then you will want to stay FAAAAR away from this one. Four, if you don't like comic book type movies then you might want to steer clear because this film is very conscious of its graphic novel roots.
Lastly, and on a more serious note, if you think that post-modernism is a movie "Being weird for the sake of being weird" then you won't understand this movie and probably shouldn't even attempt it. This movie has more meta-jokes, gimmicks and effects then a movie with its premise has a real right to. That being said however, under all that there is a genuine story being told. The relationships become more and more complicated as the film goes on and in the end it is the characters that won me over and not the tricks.
If you have survived the above cuts and are still interested in seeing this movie then it is you all seven of you evil-ex lovin' B@#$tards that this movie is for. Everyone else can go watch something else.
Two small things are worth mentioning as standing out for me. One, having had a nasty breakup in my own past (and it WAS brutal) I have never seen a movie that depicts the way guys feel when they are broken hearted. You sort of float along, people yell things at you, you sometimes forget where you are I almost walked in front of a bus once. This film's first half hour or so hits this right on the nose. Another thing that relates to this is that it helps if you have been through a nasty breakup (not compulsory, but it helps) so the people on the forums who are watching this movie with their nine year old children should realize that, what with video game references that are from the 80's and early 90's and a rather adult (maybe not mature but adult) storyline, this probably means that prepubescent kids are NOT the target audience here.
Secondly, I hate Culkins, I have loathed them since Home Alone, so when I say that Kieran Culkin was the one I enjoyed the most (and I'm a big fan of Jason Schwartzman too) you can appreciate just how good he was in here. I hate that.
So, if you want to see a movie that's fun, has a story, is funny and filled with geek culture references (this movie should be required watching for ANY fan of The Big Bang Theory) and can stand a little blatant reality twisting, give this a try. Keep in mind though that it is not for everyone. It just was for me.
Note: This rating would be 9/10 but when I rented it from a company that shall remain nameless, the special features were listed but not accessible, movies that do this should be punished. If I had liked the movie less I would have removed two or possibly three stars but one will do here.
8/10