Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World Sunday, August 22, 2010

Near our new house is an arthouse theater* that plays morbid stuff like the overrated Winter's Bone and sugar-free French bubblegum along the lines of Coco and Igor. For some reason, this theater has a sister theater in Northhampton playing equally unadventurous fare. The Cinemark is the only non-arthouse cinema accessible to us in the Pioneer Valley. I'll say this for it; it was a common punishment when I was a child to be made to sit in a far corner, silently and out of the way, and The Cinemark sits in the same way, like an abashed giant, behind The Hampshire Mall. It's almost difficult to find.

I had natural reservations about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. The Brian O'Malley comic series never appealed to me at first glance--something about them seemed too big-eyed and pre-sexually dimorphic. Same goes for Michael Cera. But we really wanted to see a movie and were squeezed between the deadly Scyllia and Charbydis of The Expendables and The Kids Are All Right and right into Scott Pilgrim's seemingly weak arms.

We loved it! I can't think of any recent movie that better weds the play-sense of games and movies, or which evokes more honest interaction between the audience and the gimmick-packed toolbox accessible to modern filmmaking. Yet I'm not surprised by the bad box-office for this movie. The trailer is brain-meltingly generic. The movie itself is full of catchy, authentic-sounding garage rock and Nintendo Entertainment System references, both of which register strongly with my generation but which probably seem corny to an 18 year old. Edgar Wright, the director, seems genuinely to love these things-- the spatter of shiny coins against the ground, the swing of a flaming sword around a protagonist's head, the murky sound waves one wants to see pulse from a Marshall Stack. All of this equals Big Joy, which is anathema to the Neanderthal-browed Tarkovskian aesthetic dourness of your average teenager, and has been for decades. This movie is strictly for adults.

*In our first week in Amherst we went to see a revival print of To Catch A Thief. The audience was full of honor-roll kids and their parents. The projection was murky and off-center throughout. There was a recent ad in Craigslist for a professional projectionist at the theater. I hope they found one.