KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #10: SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD (2010, dir by Edgar Wright)
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
Now that the movie theaters are opening again, and I’m vaccinated and feel comfortable going, they’re kind of scrambling a little for actual movies to put in the theaters!
So there are re-releases going on, and this week they were kind enough to re-release Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a movie I loved when it first came out, but I had forgotten just how much. I’d say this is a nearly perfect movie.
Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a young man kind of slouching his way randomly through life. He doesn’t have a job, he mooches off of his gay friend Wallace (Kieran Culkin) by living in his apartment, and, after being dumped by his girlfriend a year before, is terrified to have a real relationship, so he is dating a high school girl named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong, who is actually older than Michael Cera in real life). Whom I would be thrilled to see a whole movie about. I love Knives Chau. The one thing he has going for him is his band, though they aren’t really very good.
They are very impressed that he is dating a high school girl, though, except for the drummer, Kim (Alison Pill), whom he dated and dumped in high school, and she sees right through his bulls@*t.
Then, one day, Scott dreams of a girl with purple hair, skating through the desert. This girl of his dreams turns out to be a real girl named Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who just moved to Toronto from New York, and is way too good for Scott. I mean, so is Knives Chau, everyone is too good for Scott. But he manages to get her attention, and get her to go out with him (without telling Knives about Ramona or Ramona about Knives), and then it turns out that Ramona happens to have seven evil exes, and Scott has to battle them.
What I didn’t put in that synopsis is what is so hard to put into words, and what makes the movie so special, which is the feel of it, the atmosphere. It’s literally a video game, all the battles and the power ups and so on, but also it’s a comic book (this is actually its first form written by Bryan Lee O’ Malley in 2005). Sometimes the movie even models itself as a parody of a sitcom.
Michael Cera is perfect as Scott, in that he has to be likable, even when he is visibly a whiny jackass. You root for him even when he is doing all the wrong things and why do any of these girls like him anyway? It would be so easy for him to come off as gross and tiresome, but Michael Cera’s Michael Cera-ness makes the part work. This was peak Michael Cera, and frankly, there was nowhere for him to go but down. I envisage a big Michael Cera comeback after he is 40 or so, he’ll have a new grownup career that will only be possible when he is years away from his kid self.
One great thing about this film is the cast, which, like in Diner or The Outsiders, was full of unknowns who later became famous, some super famous. Not Cera or Anna Kendrick, or Kieran Culkin, though this was the first time we were introduced to what Kieran Culkin does best, which is smart, sharp sarcasm. He comes very close to stealing the movie. But this was the first time I ever saw Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, or Brie Larson, and there were some big things in their futures!
It just hit me, going through that cast, how many of them were child actors made good, including Jason Schwatzman, which is very heartwarming. Generally, I have had it with movies about mediocre young men surrounded by awesome women who spend all their time propping him up until he Learns and Grows, but sometimes a movie comes along and blows that trope out of the water, and this is one of those films.
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog