Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Helly's Film Take- Scott Pilgrim VS The World

This film starts of firing on all cylinders and continues at this rip roaring pace until the bitter end. We are sucked into a hipster, video game fantasy land complete with evil villains who must be defeated, dream girls to be won over and a bass playing hero at it's centre.

I love the whole visual style of this film and the quick cuts between scenes which writer/director Edgar Wright seems very fond of (judging by his two previous films Shaun of The Dead and Hot Fuzz.) It definitely makes for a more heightened reality and therefore it creates endless possibilities for the characters inside this world. I even like the subtle visual touches for example whenever the phone rings a comic book font saying 'ringgggg' comes across the screen.

The dialogue is razor sharp and the performances, finely tuned. A lot of the characters seem to be lifted straight out of the pages of a comic book, they are not ultra realistic but then this not a realistic movie. Every character is very clearly defined, even smaller characters like Envy Adams who appears to be the femme fatale of the film, and Scott's sister Stacey seems to be a clear antagonist. I should also state the obvious here and say that the film is incredibly funny and endlessly quotable, but the jokes are so jam packed into this film, that you could easily miss a few of them so you have to stay on guard.

For me, one of the only flaws with this film is that upon it's end it almost feels like a sensory overload and I feel that it would have packed more of a punch if it had been shorter. While the battle scenes are all expertly choreographed, I grew tired of them after a while and actually prefer the scenes surrounding the battles. However I do like the little twist thrown in for the final battle where Scott must face himself and felt it was a high point in the movie. I also would have liked to hear just a little bit more of the music created by sex bo-bomb (side note- how great is that name?!) as the small amount that we did hear, sounded pretty rad.

The other thing about this film is that even though I loved it, I can easily see how anyone over thirty would hate it. It's definitely made for a certain demographic but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. In similar vain, a film like It's Complicated is probably not going to receive as warm a reception from people our age, as it's aimed at people over forty. I haven't checked out any reviews of Scott Pilgrim... but I would be willing to bet that Margaret and David from At the movies wouldn't have been too rapturous about it.

This film was a fantastically fun piece of film making and I was happy to go along for the ride!

6 comments:

  1. cool review, keen to check this out cuz I really enjoyed wright's last two films

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  2. Yeah I cant wait to see it.
    I readed the first book (courtesy of comic book fiend dean) and liked it a whole lot. Although I guess not enough to finish the series... thank god for movies!

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  3. Wow I didn't even know it was a book! But that makes a lotta sense...

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  4. That's funny, I hated their songs.... and they all sounded the same.
    I walked into this film knowing only that Michael Cera was in it, so you can imagine how shocked I was when some guy entered through the ceiling.
    It was pretty fun overall, but it did get a little too big towards the end; I almost wanted it to just take a break for a minute.

    Also, I loved Keiran Culkin's character.

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  5. I just saw David and Margaret review the movie, and David gave it 3.5, Margaret 2.5 - and they pretty much said the same things as you - i.e. the age demographic, bit too long etc.

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  6. Just saw this today and loved it. Surprisingly funny although it does struggle to close out the film and I was pretty glad when it finished.

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