lightcastle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightcastle) wrote2010-08-18 01:01 am
lightcastle) wrote2010-08-18 01:01 am
Scott Pilgrim vs The World - Spoilers
Non-spoiler version, this is a visually delightful film and a great way to while away a couple of hours.
The non-spoiler version really does present the take-home here. It's great fun, and the visuals are wonderful. There's lots of CGI without it feeling overwrought and overly-distracting, it just works extremely well. The whole conceit of Scott's life/world basically using video-game/manga rules makes for a wonderful surrealism that most everyone just deadpans past. Not having read the books, I can't say if the tone matches up, but here it sort of walks the line of everyone noticing the weirdness and not so it is difficult to tell if this is just in his head or supposed to be reality. (And, of course, it doesn't really matter.)
As an action film, it's fine. As an ode to Manga and video game logic as the story frame for a generation, it's lovely. (At least, I figure that's what's going on here.) As a romantic comedy... it has a problem. The comedy part works well, but a romantic comedy tends to require the audience wanting the couple to get together and here that's just difficult. Scott is a whiny prat. He is written as a self-involved irritating jerk, so I can only assume that's direct from the books. Perhaps the books subvert this cleverly in some way, but in the film Michael Cera sort of underlines that Scptt is the kind of guy you want to see not win. That he's supposed to be a chick magnet just makes you scratch your head. I think that may be the major clue that this is an elaborate fantasy in his head, since every woman everywhere is in love with him.
Ramona is also a bit of a problem. She's a manic pixie dream girl, existing only to be the princess rescued at the end and to help Scott grow emotionally. (Given the video-game motif, the princess thing is less problematic that it could be.) She does show flashes of a far more interesting depth, but we never get to see it.
In fact, the whole cast pretty much drips unexplored backstory, which I can only assume is the result of them putting enough of the books in to draw on that depth, but not having time to explore any of it. Which makes me really want to read them, because they might be really good. I'd love to see more of Kim Pine, and Wallace.
Those are minor quibbles in the end, however. I would have liked to see more, and better casting might have avoided Scott being so unsympathetic, but the conceit of the film doesn't work without the "fight for the girl" scenario, so it is what it is. Everything else about the film, from the pacing to the visuals to the nods to pop culture and geekdom - hell, even Toronto not having to pretend to be anything other than Toronto - is wonderful. (Spotting the geek references is fun and I could feel so many whizzing right past me. I am proud I caught the "Ming's ring" sound effect from the amazingly camp 1980's Flash Gordon, though.)
So definitely go see it and while away a couple of hours admiring the shiny. Then, I suspect, we should all go buy the books.
The non-spoiler version really does present the take-home here. It's great fun, and the visuals are wonderful. There's lots of CGI without it feeling overwrought and overly-distracting, it just works extremely well. The whole conceit of Scott's life/world basically using video-game/manga rules makes for a wonderful surrealism that most everyone just deadpans past. Not having read the books, I can't say if the tone matches up, but here it sort of walks the line of everyone noticing the weirdness and not so it is difficult to tell if this is just in his head or supposed to be reality. (And, of course, it doesn't really matter.)
As an action film, it's fine. As an ode to Manga and video game logic as the story frame for a generation, it's lovely. (At least, I figure that's what's going on here.) As a romantic comedy... it has a problem. The comedy part works well, but a romantic comedy tends to require the audience wanting the couple to get together and here that's just difficult. Scott is a whiny prat. He is written as a self-involved irritating jerk, so I can only assume that's direct from the books. Perhaps the books subvert this cleverly in some way, but in the film Michael Cera sort of underlines that Scptt is the kind of guy you want to see not win. That he's supposed to be a chick magnet just makes you scratch your head. I think that may be the major clue that this is an elaborate fantasy in his head, since every woman everywhere is in love with him.
Ramona is also a bit of a problem. She's a manic pixie dream girl, existing only to be the princess rescued at the end and to help Scott grow emotionally. (Given the video-game motif, the princess thing is less problematic that it could be.) She does show flashes of a far more interesting depth, but we never get to see it.
In fact, the whole cast pretty much drips unexplored backstory, which I can only assume is the result of them putting enough of the books in to draw on that depth, but not having time to explore any of it. Which makes me really want to read them, because they might be really good. I'd love to see more of Kim Pine, and Wallace.
Those are minor quibbles in the end, however. I would have liked to see more, and better casting might have avoided Scott being so unsympathetic, but the conceit of the film doesn't work without the "fight for the girl" scenario, so it is what it is. Everything else about the film, from the pacing to the visuals to the nods to pop culture and geekdom - hell, even Toronto not having to pretend to be anything other than Toronto - is wonderful. (Spotting the geek references is fun and I could feel so many whizzing right past me. I am proud I caught the "Ming's ring" sound effect from the amazingly camp 1980's Flash Gordon, though.)
So definitely go see it and while away a couple of hours admiring the shiny. Then, I suspect, we should all go buy the books.