I’m not normally a cinema goer. Pretty much anyone who knows me knows that I much prefer to watch films at home, lying on a sofa. Cinemas, while an interesting outing, are expensive, restrictive, expensive and expensive. Perhaps growing up in a village where the nearest city didn’t even have a multi-screen cinema has turned me against them somewhat. However this summer I’ve been out to see more films than in the past 4 years put together; the latest being the well-hyped Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
Apparently based off a comic book, SPvTW has got a lot of attention from the teenage/early 20s crowd. Personally I hadn’t heard about the movie until people started posting the trailer to Facebook, but the hype is definitely there. I went into this movie having only seen the trailer. I’d not seen or heard anything about the plot or even how good the film was supposed to be. But still, it was a good opportunity to get out of the house and spend some time with some friends. An occurrence all too rare during the holidays. The story of the movie is as follows: Scott Pilgrim is your standard geeky, 22-year-old bass player who lives in a small Toronto house with his roommate Wallace. Scott meets, literally, the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately his pursuit of said girl leads to some unfortunate encounters as Scott needs to defeat her Seven Evil Exes in order to have a relationship with the girl, all the while trying to achieve stardom with his terribly named band.
The film clocks in at 112 minutes, but needs to fit in a lot of story. It juggles the plot threads of the various characters around with the long fights and even a few surreal visual scenes, all under 2 hours. Obviously, this means that the movie is fast. After the short intro, the movies rockets up to a blistering pace and never really slows down. Of course, this can lead to some great comic moments. There’s a running joke where the camera cuts away from Scott, someone mentions his hair only to immediately cut back to him wearing a hat. There’s a lot of small jokes that definitely gave me a chuckle. The problem is that they’re all blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments. While this can help a movie every now and then, I’m not so convinced it works as the entire concept behind the movie’s pacing. The movie also has this strange habit of throwing random effects on the screen at important or pivotal moments: big batman-style sound effects accompanying the musical portion, a kiss leading to a load of floaty hearts escaping the kissers’ mouths, etc. My guess is that this is trying to keep the style of the comic, similar to a number of other adaptations. But this combined with the movies over the top speed leads to the whole thing feeling rather schizophrenic. Scenes and people jump right out of nowhere with little-to-no buildup and at times can feel very heavy-handed. Even though they can sometimes feel out of place the visuals are quite impressive. Throughout the movie the style and cinematography are fantastic. The snow covered city shots are great, and while you may not expect them, the stylised effects the movie occasionally burps out at the viewer look very nice. All in all it gives a very pleasing experience visually.
Hopefully a film that features an up-and-coming band will have some good music (Wyld Stallyns not withstanding). For the most part it succeeds. It has some vaguely interesting alternative rock stuff, meandering around various similar styles. The music in the several band-playing scenes is on the whole very good and fits the visuals seamlessly. This is also where a lot of the direct video game references fall. The film opens to the sound of some familiar Legend of Zelda music, which features all the way through the move. At one point it’s even remixed to provide an oddly haunting soundtrack to a quite serene scene. Not something normally associated with 8-bit music these days.
It’s a good thing that the majority of direct video game references are kept to the music. The few that aren’t are, unfortunately, a bit jarring. They don’t really fit that much with the rest of the movie, and if you don’t know what they’re talking about then it won’t make a whole lot of sense. It can feel a little like the viewer is being pandered to, but for the most part this is just nit-picking. They’re few and far between and, much like the rest of the movie, they’re gone almost as soon as they show up so it’s not much of a problem.
All in all SPvTW is a solid movie, but very, very silly and at times more than a little juvenile. My advice would be this: Watch the trailer. If it doesn’t grab you, then perhaps give Scott Pilgrim a miss. But if you like it, you’ll probably love the movie itself because, really, it’s just more of the same.