Michael Cera crushes the competition in Edgar Wright’s fantasy epic. Michael Cera in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” Photo: Universal Pictures “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” is the first movie to bring us, among many other things, on-screen battle-scoring, a visit from the Vegetarian Police, and a really cute kickass girl named Knives. For most of its modest run-time (112 minutes), Edgar Wright’s new comedy lays persuasive claim to being the year’s most blazingly imaginative film. Well, okay, along with “Inception.” But Wright’s movie is also blazingly funny, something no one has yet attempted to assert about the Christopher Nolan blockbuster. The picture is a dizzying creative leap for Wright, the giddy parodist behind “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.” Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim comics began appearing in 2004, and the director latched onto them almost immediately. One understands why it has taken him so long to bring O’Malley’s fantastical stories to the screen — the cast, which is deep in talented young actors, must have been difficult to align. Michael Cera plays Scott Pilgrim, mild-mannered bass player in a Toronto punk band called the Sex Bob-Omb. Ellen Wong is Knives Chau, his underage girlfriend, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is Ramona, the mysterious Amazon delivery girl for whom he truly yearns. Then there’s Anna Kendrick as Scott’s sister, Stacey, who can’t believe her 22-year-old brother is dating a high-school girl (“Scandal!”); and Kieran Culkin as Scott’s gay roommate, Wallace, whose specialty is stealing Stacey’s boyfriends; and Alison Pill as Kim, the monumentally hostile drummer in Scott’s band. The plot, unlike the movie itself, is simple: In order to win the elusive Ramona, Scott must first do battle with her seven former lovers — the Evil Exes. The picture is constructed like a vintage video-arcade game, and these contests have a wild, psychedelic propulsion. One of the Exes, Lucas Lee (Chris Evans in a winningly self-deprecating performance), is a movie star of explosive non-cinematic skills (he flings Scott through the air with such force that the skinny suitor lands on a faraway tower). Another, Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh in a blindingly blond wig), is the vegan bass player in a rival band, the Clash at Demonhead, and he engages Scott in a withering battle-of-the-basses. The bisexual Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman) is a kickboxing tornado; the Katanayagi twins (Keita Saitou and Shota Saito) are star DJs armed with wall-shaking amplification; and Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha) is a heavily-mascara’d fop who comes flying into a concert to perform a quick dance number with a crew of demon backup chicks and then give Scott a very hard martial-artsy time. Scott dispatches these characters with some ace moves of his own (“I kicked him so hard that he saw the curvature of the Earth!”). But waiting at the end of this line of antagonists is snaky club-owner Gideon Gordon Graves (a preening Jason Schwartzman), the most formidable Ex of all. Much of the movie’s whacked-out humor is the work of the director. Wright’s facility with eccentric ornamentation — bursts of canned laugh-track laughter, proudly cartoonish graphics, dreamscape enchantments and sudden split-screenery — is irresistibly endearing; and his whiz-bang editing is a marvel throughout. (He’s always one step ahead of the viewer, suddenly taking us places we didn’t realize we were ready to go to yet.) And the script, which he co-wrote, is a feast of deadpan throwaways. (“I’ve dabbled with being a bitch,” says Ramona. “My brother is permanently enfeebled,” notes Stacey.) It’s a bit of a letdown, then, that the movie loses its witty focus toward the end and descends into familiar CGI uproar (the concluding faceoff with Gideon goes on much too long). But any movie that can sell us Michael Cera as a hard-hitting hero has already accomplished something remarkable (as has Cera himself, of course). And the entrancingly bizarre world into which Scott’s adventures have been set summons that rarest of responses: It feels like something new. Check out everything we’ve got on “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” For breaking news and previews of the latest comic book movies — updated around the clock — visit SplashPage.MTV.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World’
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‘Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World’: Big Fun, By Kurt Loder
