Director: Edgar Wright (USA, UK, Canada Japan). Year of Release: 2010
Snowy Toronto. Scott Pilgrim’s friends have just learned that he has a new girlfriend – a 17-year old school girl called Knives. They haven’t kissed yet, although they nearly held hands once. Instead, Scott and Knives spend their time playing those games in the local arcade where you have to dance in synchronicity with the action videos on the screen in front of you. Their aptitude at the games shows that this must take up a lot of their time.
So, Scott is a wimpy loser who has little interaction with girls, let alone girlfriends, and has only got Knives to go out with him because she’s a naive girl 5 years younger than him, right? He must be, as he’s played by Michael Cera. Well, that’s as maybe but It seems that all the coolest chicks in town (sorry, the hipster language is addictive) are beating down his door for his attention. One ex, Envy (formerly Natalie) is now a sexy singer. Another still plays drums in Scott’s band Sex Bob-Omb.
But watch out, Knives, there’s another girl in town – the roller skating Manic Pixie Dream Girl Ramona; whose hair changes colour every week. Ramona is literally a dream girl — she appears in Scott’s dream before he meets her. When the “real” Ramona delivers Scott an Amazon package, she agrees to go out with him with no indication of what she sees in him. If she has any motivation, it’s to stop his continuous pleading. But she consequently falls for him. That’s what dream girls do.
Everything looks fine for Scott, who now has the girl of his dreams. All he needs to do is let Knives down gently – a problem because this would mean actually talking to her. Then, while Sex Bob-Omb are in the middle of a gig, Matthew Patel appears from the rafters. Matthew is the first of Ramona’s Seven Evil Exes, who Scott has to fight in a real life video game, if he is to win her affection (why? Stop asking complicated questions).
One by one, Romana’s exes turn up – an actor whose stunt doubles take on most of the fighting, a self-righteous vegan (in 2010 there was no other kind), a short blonde woman with black tape around her eyes, two synthesizer playing Japanese DJ twins. Ex number 7 is a manipulative sleaze ball to whom Ramona can’t help returning after he put a chip in the back of her head. The fights all take the same form, and sometimes Scott fights the same person twice. It all gets very repetitive.
There is a degree of inventiveness in the way the fights are staged, like those from the ’60s Batman TV show on speed, complete with words like “pow”, “bam”, and “crash” frantically scrawled across the screen. In fact, there’s a lot of animated doodling enhancing the live action throughout the film. Whenever the phone rings, we see RING! RING! in thin white letters on the screen. It is fun for the first few times, but it’s a one trick pony whose repetition soon becomes boring.
One sequence is obviously satirising a tv sitcom – something which was also tried by Natural Born Killers. There is one difference, though. In NBK, the comic frivolity was used to counterpoint a much more serious story of domestic violence against a young girl. You might argue that it was in poor taste, but at least it meant something. Here, nothing really matters. In fact, one of the distinguishing features of Scott Pilgrim is that it has absolutely nothing to say.
Which is not to say that it doesn’t say anything. The film’s sexual politics are those of a wish-fulfilment Incel who suddenly finds attractive young girls – you can hardly call them women – falling at his feet. The girls, however, are granted no personality of their own. Ramona’s only distinguishing feature is her ever-changing hair. I don’t remember her ever offering an opinion about anything. Other women, like Scott’s sister, are barely visible, let alone audible.
Scott’s behaviour towards Ramona when they first meet – refusing to let her leave and doggedly following her – sails dangerously close to stalker territory. His initiation into a new relationship is not to engage with Ramona (or Knives) but to battle with her mainly male Exes, by whom she is defined. Ramona takes it as read that these fights must take place. She is there as a prize to be claimed by a man once he has carried out his allotted Labours.
Maybe I should say from the start that this is a film made for (and presumably by) comic-book geeks who think that the Matrix was the height of sophisticated plotting. In other words, it wasn’t made for me, so there is no reason for me to like it. Which is just as well, as I found it tediously dreary. The video game aspect results in a complete lack of jeopardy. If anything is possible, there’s no point in us investing in any of the (mainly dull) characters.
Ultimately, I think that Edgar Wright makes films for people like him, which is laudable in principle, as long as you are like Edgar Wright. The things that he thinks are interesting and exciting tend to bore me to tears. For a film which already shows much more style than substance, it is a problem when the small remaining substance contains so little of interest, and certainly no intellectual curiosity We are left with a needy film shouting “me, me, me” at the top of its voice.
There is also something about the names of Scott’s bandmates: Stephen Stills and Young Neil, which is profoundly irritating. The naming just feels too self-satisfied, using the name of existing musicians who are not exactly cool, but famous enough for you to imagine thousands of smug teenage boys emitting a knowing smirk, thinking they’re the only one who got the reference. The references do not impart any further meaning, other than to make you feel part of the in group.
Having said this, there are a few good bits, even if the best of these were done by Adam West nearly 50 years before. Wright takes advantages of the improvements to CGI software in the intervening years, but he is still just adding captions saying BIFF! BANG! POW! In the middle of the staged fights. For all the awesome visuals, it’s not doing much new. This is enough for people who like this sort of stuff, but don’t be surprized if it leaves the rest of us cold.
CinePhil 