Scott Pilgrim vs the World

It appears to be the case that I am somewhat alone in my view of Edgar Wright’s ‘Scott Pilgrim vs The World’. I have just been having a peek at some of the reviews and comments other viewers have made on the IMDB website and have found almost unanimous love and praise for this film. Additionally, it has also been on the receiving end of great critical acclaim and approval. However, I must admit that I found ‘Scott Pilgrim’ to be a distinctly average and overall disappointing piece of work. For many reasons, it fails to capture any of the wonderfully unique qualities which have become inherent in the work of Edgar Wright, of whom I am a big fan.

As a director of such ability and creativity I had hoped for so much more than what is delivered in ‘Scott Pilgrim’. Whereas Wright has always had the sharp wit and precise focus of Simon Pegg’s writing to steer their previous projects forward, ‘Scott Pilgrim’ feels more like an extensive brainstorming session of potentially good ideas, yet lacks any sense of control or direction. With TV show ‘Spaced’ and movies ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Hot Fuzz’, the pairing of these two consistently made for highly original viewing, with a truly majestic blend of genre splicing and homage, held together by a string of flawless performances and beautifully constructed scripts.

While the film is visually a huge success, with all the hallmarks of Wright’s directorial style evident in it’s scenes of computer game homage and comic book violence, it lacks enormously in humour and substance. The plot, about Scott having to defeat the seven evil exes of his girlfriend, frankly becomes redundant in the hands of Wright, with ‘Scott Pilgrim’ essentially becoming no more than a canvas for him to show off his skills as a visual artist as opposed to a director with the ability to drive a story in the right direction. For instance, the vast majority of the moments of homage and parody appear to serve no purpose whatsoever and are often entirely irrelevant to what’s going on in the film. It is littered with nods to moments from computer games that are at no point mentioned nor make any sense. This is a major flaw, which should be glaringly apparent to anyone who is a fan of Wright’s previous work, in which any element of parody or homage made sense, and more importantly added to the story.

As a result of such loose direction ‘Scott Pilgrim’ also fails to raise many laughs. The few that do exist often arise from a disappointingly under-used Kieran Culkin, whose perfectly understated performance as Wallace, Scott’s gay room-mate, is one of the film’s undoubted highlights. This overall lack of humour and engagement with the audience left me feeling that ‘Scott Pilgrim’ was more of a missed opportunity than a terrible film. Furthermore, with the input of someone such as Simon Pegg, one can only imagine how much better ‘Scott Pilgrim’ could have been. A project such as this could not have been placed in better hands than those of Edgar Wright, yet still it somehow falls way below par.