When I first saw the previews for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, I wasn’t impressed: it looked like an over-produced mess. Then, it came out to fairly positive reviews, which made me begin to rethink seeing it. What finally pushed me to see it, though, were the absolutely raving reviews of it I was hearing from a bunch of people I know who generally have similar tastes in movies. In this case, the “similar” is what applies, because I did not like the movie at all.
The basic idea of the movie is that a geeky young man (Michael Cera, playing essentially the same character he did in Juno) falls for an enigmatic woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). In order to date her, though, he must first defeat her seven evil exes.
One thing I cannot criticize at all in the film is its creativity. The movie is in essence one long video game – when Scott defeats the exes (oops … hope I didn’t just give something away there) they disintegrate into coins and a score slowly floats up; each ex he defeats gives him more points. It’s visually very interesting as well, with graphics onscreen that make it look somewhere between a comic book (it is based on a graphic novel) and a video game.
And yet, the video game motif was in the end what I really disliked about the film. Through most of it, I felt as though I was watching someone else play a video game. Now, I’ll admit that I have done that in the past – you’re walking through an arcade and see someone who is really good at a game playing it, so you stop to watch. The key, though, is that most likely you stop to watch for a few minutes – not for close to 2 hours. By the end, I was just getting bored. You pretty much know what the outcome of a movie like this is going to be. Boy wants girl, girl wants boy – does this really seem like the kind of film that is going to go with the non-obvious ending? Of course not.
I can certainly understand why some people would love this movie. I’m just not one of them.