Scott Pilgrim saves me from BSG

I’ve managed to watch 26 episodes of Battlestar Galactica over the last 2-3 days. I’ve also been staring at my online teaching profile until my eyeballs bled (OK, not quite but I did have to go to the opticians). I thought I deserved a break so I scooted across Edinburgh, despite the flipping road closure at Holyrood Park, and went to see:

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

“Chicken isn’t vegan?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: regular young guy in a band meets an amazing girl who takes his heart only he finds out he has to defeat her seven evil ex’s in mortal video-game-style combat to be with her. As you do.

I had a hell of a job picking a single piece of dialogue for the section above as this film is just so ridiculously quotable. It’s based on a series of comic books and it’s presented in a hugely comic-like style. Imagine something akin to Sin City crossed with the Mortal Kombat games.

Michael Cera plays his usual typecast character (check out Youth in Revolt and Superbad – actually, don’t check out Superbad as it sucks)Â as the eponymous Pilgrim. He starts the film dating a Chinese schoolgirl (Ellen Wong) until the dream girl Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) enters his life.

Very quickly he finds himself fighting her seven evil ex’s for the right to date her. Quite how he happens to be a martial arts badass is beyond me, but – hey – it’s a film with sound effects appearing as text in the background. I’ll let that slip. Also how one of the bands in the film can consist of a woman on vocals, a bassist and a drummer. What, no guitars?

Anyway.

The film proceeds at a pace fast enough that nobody should get bored. The quick dialogue and deadpan performances make it all the more amusing as well as the excellent use of effects to bolster the scenery. Lovely little touches to make it appear more like a graphic novel had my inner geek giggling manically.

I doubt it has the legs for a sequel and I overheard someone on the way out saying he found it a shame that they’d crammed all six books into one movie. As such I assume they’ve got no source material to work into a sequel although there was a hint of the possibility of one just before the end credits.

Frankly, that’s fine with me. It’s a great piece of escapism, is crammed full of superb dialogue and visual humour and doesn’t even for a moment try to take itself seriously. To try and stretch that out for another 90 minutes or so would, I’m sure, result in something nowhere near as enjoyable.

Not that that ever stops Hollywood from trying.