The great thing about posting a review like this on a nerdcentric blog is that I don’t have to waste time defending my beliefs or offering contexts from my youth.  If you are reading a review posted on such a poorly marketed site as the Nerdcore Comedy Tour the odds are you have sought us out because we have a shared history of blowing into NES cartridges and spending sixth period in our lockers. If you are reading this the odds are you will love Scott Pilgrim vs the World. For everyone else who got laid early in life and have had an experience with the game of football not provided by Tecmo®, fuck off. I don’t care if you don’t like this movie, it wasn’t made for you, and I hope all of your children are gay.

Where was I? Oh yes, Scott Pilgrim!

In hopes of complete honesty, let me just say that I watched the film at a midnight screening at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, Texas. As things go when you are awesome, as I am, Edgar Wright popped by for our matinee and ran up and down the aisles giving every person in attendance a high five before the film started. Part of me suspects this was merely a cog in a Masonic conspiracy which has spanned decades and at least one presidential assassination in hopes of swaying the subjectivity of my review. While I am flattered that so many clandestine meetings have been held on my behalf I must admit that it was hardly needed. This is a film about a comic book that was about video games. It is every part of my brain having sex with every other part of my brain. I’m good, boys.

First it's like this for awhile.

The amount of plot you could glean from the trailer:
Scott Pilgrim is a somewhat listless Toronto hipster in a band. He falls in love with a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” with a penchant for displaying her unstable and mysterious inner workings through a series of outrageous hair styles. He immediately falls in love with her and as a metaphor for dealing with a lover’s baggage must fight every person she’s ever made out with to the death in lavishly choreographed fight sequences cut by an epileptic.

Like most of Wright’s work Scott Pilgrim is a juxtaposition of genres. He’s done zombie/romantic comedy and British pastoral/Michael Bay mash-ups before. As crazy as they might have seemed going into them the case has been made again and again that the man knows what he’s doing. Here’s one that no one asked for. “Overly precious twee mumblecore independents” meet “Kung Fu Mega Man: A Mark Neveldine Joint.”

Long shots, clever pastiches, and quirky editing choices spend the first act lulling you into a whimsical world of recognizable caricatures only to be interrupted mid-indie-rock song, as it were, by a racially insensitive boss battle full of hovering demon hipster chicks and a Bollywood dance sequence. It’s then back to long walks and the pronounced ellipsification of hipster language. Both of these tracks get crazier and crazier until the film concludes at just shy of two hours.

And then it's all like this.

When the film was over and the lights were raised I found myself smiling buffoonishly. This is strange because, as many  of you know, I am dead inside and broadly incapable of feeling joy. I walked to my car alone and reeking of a chocolate stout I had spilled on myself during one of the many “fuck yeah” moments, and as I drove home I started trying to piece together the conspiracy. It all seemed too perfect. Beyond the appearance of the director, a devious ploy to be certain, there were many aspects of the film that seemed to have been placed specifically to win MY favor. The sound design was littered with video game sound effects, musical interludes, and a Universal logo tuned through what sounded like a five channel Ricoh RP2A03 sound chip. Some elements of the books had been stripped away for length considerations, but the ones they kept seemed even more nostalgic and powerful as sound and movement filled out the rest of my patining memories.

The girls were the sort of girls that I could see myself befriending or lusting after. The guys were the sort of guys I could see myself befriending or lusting after. (Understand that in both of these circumstances I am being played by the slightly cooler version of myself who doesn’t have as many x’s on his t-shirt tag and plays an instrument. It would seem that he is also a bisexual. News to me.)

Better than our own world, we are presented with a land where our private history is wide spread enough that every single band in existence is named after obscure video games. It is an idyllic life where no one really has to have a job any more strenuous than a coffee shop, there will always be some girl that will go out with you no matter how much of a dick you are, and when the time comes to face your enemies your battle will include lightning bolts and flaming swords you pull out of your chest.

This is a film that has been made to stimulate that dream that lives within all of us, the once children of the video game age, who still fight against the horrible conformity of the culture at large in our own way.  We haven’t sold our consoles and we know that slothfulness, thumb dexterity, and Japanese snack foods are the only true weapons in the fight to not become our parents. This is for us what Twilight is for 40 year old secretaries who never invested in marital aids.

The “problem” with Scott Pilgrim is that few properties have sought to please their defined audience as exclusively. Just as Watchmen was a 162 minute love letter written in a dialect that only readers of the original series could understand, Scott Pilgrim is a film predicated on the viewer sharing a lifetime of experiences. More than simply adding in-jokes for those of us who know about “Crash n the Boys” or the back catalogue of Vic Tokai, a lack of knowledge on an element like role playing attributes can literally confound a person completely out of the film when they pop out of nowhere. And I’m ok with that.

While it might hurt the film’s bottom line to alienate so many thick necked troglodytes I find a sense of purity in offering so few helping hands to keep them on board.  Scott Pilgrim vs the World is like one of those speeding train levels in a brawler game where you have to move across the tops of sleeper cars fighting wave after wave of enemies. If a well timed jump kick knocks you off the train you are toast as the level continues to move and enemies continue to spawn without you. Luckily, the target market for this film, those among us who played with power, are more than capable of getting to the end and can feel a level of due superiority in the blank stares of the fallen. Considering how stupid I am made to feel whenever I don’t know who is winning in the basketball sports I will take my moments of pride wherever I can find it.

Hell, I just used “troglodytes” in a review.

Ps. We don’t use a rating system around here. Just watch the fucking movie.

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