thomas4cinema

Edgar Wright can be fun: I really enjoyed “Shaun of the Dead”, even though I do not agree that it is the Citizen Kane of ZomCom, as some say. But fun in its very British way. It was not good enough to make me see Hot Fuzz, which seemed to be rooted a bit too strongly in the UK tv tradition of crime time tv.

What I did not expect to see from Wright was “Scott Pilgrim”: a pretty high budget (it looks) movie with fancy formalisms, especially 1) the use of animation over the real footage and 2) the merging of normal plot with console game face-offs. I think that probably started the project, in the form of “what if we did a movie that merges animation and real shots, but not in a Mary Poppins way – and that merges normal movies and games, but not in a Tron way?” Nice idea, well executed, but … it reminded me of what I thought about “Run, Lola, Run” at the time: the formal framework is kind of fun, but two repetitions would have been enough.

Here, it’s kind of fun, but the film’s fun level is dragged down by a star (Michael Cera) who is just a bit too dull for an action adventure, and too many X’es (levels) that need elimination (completion). Half an hour less, and it would have been a jolly good ride.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/scott_pilgrims_vs_the_world/