In this movie aimed at a particular audience of a particular age and particular cultural subtype (hipsters), I found Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to be an entertaining movie. But don't be put off by the description of this movie as being for hipsters - there are enough visual jokes and funny moments in the script to entertain most people. I think.
Apparently based on a comic book series which takes place in a computer game world, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a 22-year old bassist in a band, between jobs, and dumped by his ex-gf about a year ago. At the start of the film, he's recently started going out with 17-year old Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). They do things that are appropriate given their age difference - walking around town, hanging out at the gaming arcade, going to the library so she can get books to study, and looking at records at the music store. This moderately inoffensive relationship is altered when he meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who's moved to Toronto from NYC and is so cool with her pink hair. Except that to be with Ramona, he now has to defeat her seven EVIL EXES (Satya Bhabha, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Mae Whitman, Shota & Keita Saito, and Jason Schwartzmann), while also grappling with the concepts of love and self respect! And the movie writes itself.
Possibly because I knew little about it before walking in and being able pick the cultural references due to my information-sponge tendencies, I found I was quite enjoying myself and laughed out loud at some points - particularly when Scott tries to use the L word, "I lesbian you." But Officer Fisk said that he found the movie to be overly frenetic, constantly changing and difficult to get into the story. He also said he dislikes Michael Cera as a movie lead without a foil. I disagree - I felt his clueless face and generally nerdy demeanour worked well because you could understand when people said he wasn't 'cool' enough for Ramona.
Regardless of whether the things Officer Fisk objected to will also affect your enjoyment, I recognise that this is definitely a movie for people of a certain age and tendencies. From the moment the Universal Studios page comes up with the 8-bit graphics and tinkly music, you know that if people didn't play computer games, particularly from the late 80s onwards, you may not get why someone bursts into a cloud of coins when Scott defeats them. Familiarity with the comic book/manga/anime genre would probably also help given the proliferation of words popping up to accompany sound effects and other things.
Anyway, I think a lot of people would find Scott Pilgrim entertaining. Just don't take it too seriously.
7/10
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